A dash along the Darling
In Lightning Ridge we stopped for much needed showers at the artesisan bore baths. The pool itself was too hot for me but the kids and Matthias happily turned themselves into lobsters. Both kids loved chatting with the older travelling patrons who seemed to equally enjoy the exchange. We had a brief look along the main street and Hugh poked around in the mullock heaps before we found a camp outside Walgett.
Just off the Castlereagh Highway under the Pagan Creek Bridge, this was no match for our previous river camp. Four dead pigs lay on the side of the drive in, raising the question of whether we'd be woken in the night by quad bikes and spot lights. But after the trucks at the wheat siding behind us went home it was a peaceful night.
A similar concern about pig shooters niggled at the back of my mind as we looked for a camp for the following night. Particularly as it was a Friday and we'd seen a number of set-ups, blokes with dogs, swags and bikes at the Walgett petrol station. But I can happily report that we didn't run into any trouble on our way along the Darling.
We stopped in Brewarrina for lunch and found ourselves there in time to join a cultural tour at the Brewarrina Aboriginal Cultural Museum. Like all the tours I've been on, it makes such a difference to hear the history and culture of a place explained by someone who lives and owns it. Bradley explained the stone fish traps to us. The intricate structures had been there for thousands of years. Hugh struggled to maintain focus but hopefully some points made an impression.
Just north of Bourke we found a quiet camp on the river, away from other campers on the popular Mays Bend. Dozens of heron and egrets patrolled the river and fish splashed in frequent agitation. After sunset we watched feral cats nibble on a collection of dead carp that previous visitors had left in a pile.
I was enjoying a moment of quiet by the campfire while Matthias put the kids to bed, when I was rocked out of my stargazing reverie. A comet-like light caught my eye, moving low across the northern sky. When it didn’t fade away like a shooting star I called Matthias and the kids out of the tent. We watched it for about three minutes as it moved east across the sky until finally, it extinguished. Excited, baffled and relieved it wasn’t the end of the world, we learned days later that we’d witnessed the Indian Chandrayaan-3 rocket being launched to the moon!
We poked our heads in at Bourke and I felt inspired to look up some Henry Lawson poetry (he believed, "if you know Bourke, you know Australia"). I was soon choking back tears reading of drowned drovers and dead dogs. My recitals of Banjo Patterson back in the high country had been much better received by the kids.
From Bourke we opted to leave the blacktop and take the recently reopened Darling River Run route through to Wilcannia. We passed through Louth, where we had hot showers and cold lunch, and tiny Tilpa, where a pair of locals asserted their sovereignty on the front veranda of the pub. Despite following the river, we only got glimpses of it at the small historic wharf towns. Otherwise, it was a journey through vast floodplain country, passing countless emus and more goats than sheep and cattle combined.
We pushed the ks to get to a pre-booked camp, "coach and horses", in the Paroo-Darling National Park, only to find the road into the camp was chained off. With dusk well upon us we camped just off the road by the gate. Not a single vehicle passed us by. The next day we walked into the closed campground before breakfast for a beautiful sunrise over the deserted river.
After a brief stop at historic Wilcannia and a walk through red sand drifts, we carried on to a free camp on the bank of Lake Pamamaroo. Grandpa Joddy used to visit the Menindee lakes in his childhood where he had his first sailing boat, Mananui. We enjoyed a stunning sunset over the glassy water.
We drove into the town of Menindee the next day and found not much of a town at all so we headed straight onto the Kinchega National Park. We wandered through the impressive old shearing shed; an excellent preserve of a bygone era, and availed ourselves of the hot showers at the shearer's quarters. We explored a bit more of the park, largely from the comfort of the car, but the kid's were glad to return to their shoreside sandpit at our camp.
