Bourke, NSW

Bourke
Followed the Mitchell Highway up through the rich grazing and cropping property to Dubbo where they become irrigated from the Macquarie River. Along the river itself the soil is a rich dark brown that looks like it could grow just about anything, hard to say at 100kph but they looked like huge market gardens. From Dubbo we headed straight for Nyngan. I say straight for that is what it is,all the way from Dubbo to Bourke - 200k. The country changes dramatically, first to fields of cotton around Narromine and up to Trangie and then to vast flat plains of red earth with mirage lakes shimmering in the distance. The only signs of life are scrub and stray bunches of feral goats and sheep and the odd emu. Stopped for a coffee at Nyngan but decided to put on a few more kilometres before taking lunch.  Exactly half-way between Nyngan and Bourke is a so-called free camp - a few tracks on the red earth and a single picnic table. As we eat lunch we are struck by just how little traffic, relative to anything up to Nyngan, that we see: about 3 cars in total while we sat for half an hour. Suddenly we started to feel like we were on our outback adventure again: going where only a few 100 thousand have gone before, instead of zillions.

Drove into Bourke and straight out the other side to the Kidman Camp where we secured a decent site before going down-town. After grabbing a few things, we went followed the first of the Tourist trails, via the cemetery to say hello to Fred Hollows and then back out and across to the site of the 'fort' (actually Mitchell referred to it in the parlance of the day as a stockade) recreated to celebrate his arrival at the very spot. You drive about 15k off the main road to Cobar, following dirt trails and then onto the levee banks of the Darling, before arriving at the spot. I just laughed my head off: the 'fort' was a few logs bolted together in a square shape, about 3m x 3m. One side had a door opening. In front of this edifice were a few signs, one of which had an 1835 artist's impression of the meeting of Mitchell and his mates with the local inhabitants. way in the background is a tiny splodge they reckoned was 'the very fort itself'. And in 1835, there were no levees, no big beautiful billabong, the landscape would have changed with every flood, so how they know this is the very spot, miles from nowhere is a mystery as well.

Went back to camp kidman. Our neighbour accosted us with, 'What are you going to do when you hit a roo in the BMW?'. Same as he would in his Padjero I guessed to myself, call the insurance company and get it sorted. He went on to tell how he and his wife saw, this very day, some bod hitting a pig, or was it a dog?, or a dingo?, or a camel?, or an elephant?, in a Nissan Patrol and there was barely a mark on it. (The fact that the unidentified animal had disappeared and thus probably wasn't hit that hard, appeared to have escaped his eagle eye and nimble brain). So much for eye witnesses. But he continued on totally bemused by us, 'Fancy driving a BMW out here!' Almost as if it was unAustralian or simple-minded or something. I simply shrugged and muttered something about doing the same as he would or what ever it took to keep going and then begged off to go take photos.
  
This 'camp' is well known to vanners and one of the attractions is the 'Campfire'. We asked and were told, 'Oh, yes it's poet-on-a-plate night'. That translates to lamb-scrap casserole and lentils in chickpea shell broth or something equally as diet-inducing, all for only $27.50 a head. We declined but wandered over to the welcoming fire-pits anyway where a man was busy counting out chick peas and stoking fires. He was disappointed for us that we weren't coming and even aghast when we asked it it was ok to bring a chair and watch the show. 'Oh, no. It's twentyseven-fifty a head even if you don't eat.' 

We exit hurriedly, stumbling over ourselves in our haste to get away and get the cork out of a large
champagne.

The X5 clicked over from 199999 to 200000k today. Seems like only yesterday when it came to us with only 65k on the dial!

 Oh, you want a snap as well as a yarn do you? 

Under the shade of a Coolabah Tree. Lunch stop at Byrock free-camp. Byrock is the name of a property somewhere nearby and about half way between Nyngan and Bourke