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Bourke & Beyond - Day 7
Oct. 9th, 2020 02:38 pmBroken Hill to Euston
A call to the Silly Goat Cafe to book a table for 2 was answered by a friendly voice who cheerfully told me the cafe was closed until Thursday, so after a fruitless search for a viable alternative (even the one down the road we went to yesterday was closed today), it’s a McDonalds breakfast for us. At least it was also right next to the Shopping Centre & the petrol station - both places we needed to visit before leaving town
I have a vague grid of Broken Hill in my head by now, so was able to find the way to the Silver City Highway heading south without incident or any navigational help from Laura, or Jeeves - our Google Guide. Well - Goodbye Broken Hill, it’s always a pleasure to visit. I'm sure times will get better & your businesses can afford to open more often soon
Apart from a brief photo stop at some power lines disappearing in a vaguely southerly direction & the bones of dozens & dozens of roadkill animals along its shoulders, there’s not much to report about the Silver City Highway heading southward, except that it seems the Bra Tree is no longer on it. This was a tree festooned with bras, as a memorial to a local woman who died of breast cancer, but also served as a way of raising awareness of the various charities funding research & respite care. It had been pretty easy to spot on our last trip on the road & this time we were expecting it, but it’s gone... the highway is a less colourful & slightly less silly place without it
Edit Update: Apparently, it is still there, at least according to Google, anyway. So maybe we just missed it... Here's a picture of it from 2014
The other thing we were expecting to see this time was the Perry Sandhills - a place we completely missed last time we travelled down this highway, only discovering their existence long after we’d gone past them. So this time, the hills were firmly on our radar. It turned out they were only a few kilometres outside the town of Wentworth & a quick right turn off the highway brought us to them, again without any navigation assistance... you can actually see them from the highway, so don’t ask how we’d missed them the last time...
We did think they’d be bigger though... According to the little information board, the sandhill area is about 7 square kilometres. To my mind, it looked like a giant sandpit, or the dumping ground for a future concrete construction, before the cement trucks arrive
Tell you what though... it’s quite a big area when you’ve climbed, stumbled & staggered up the tallest dune & are making your way across the hills in the blasting wind & trying to shield your camera from the sand that it whips up. But it’s amazing... a little slice of the Sahara only a few kilometres from the conjunction of the 2 biggest rivers in New South Wales... more on that in a minute
In the middle of the hills, is the ‘God Tree’ - a 6-700yr old ghost gum whose trunk has been gradually buried under about 6 metres of sand, so only the canopy is above ground... & the canopy must be at least 10 metres high. The main branches are incredibly thick & where they converge at the buried trunk, it reminded me of the sequoias in Yosemite Park... under that sand must be one massive trunk!!
Aboriginal people in the area used to hunt the prehistoric megafauna here - bones have been found of Diprotodon, a giant wombat, Thylacine tigers, as well as the older, larger ancestors of today’s kangaroos, who to my mind, are quite big enough... ever seen a fully-grown male red kangaroo? The tribes used to take shelter on the hills when the 2 rivers flooded, as did the early white settlers of the area
We took Laura on the dirt road that doesn’t quite encircle the sandhill area, to give her a chance to engage the 4 wheel drive & to get some new mud to show off after I found a few puddles that, somehow, were unavoidable. No, really, they were... Then back on the highway for the last couple of kilometres into town & down to the joining point of the Murray & Darling rivers. The Darling flows down through central & western New South Wales - we’d actually crossed it a couple of times in the last few days as we were heading in the same direction - & the Murray has its origins on the Snowy Mountain range in the south-east, then flows westward until it reaches the Southern Ocean over in South Australia. The Murray is also the official border between NSW & Victoria for much of its course, so at this point, it was as close as we were going to get to travelling interstate, since our visit to Cameron’s Corner was washed out
The Riverina region, as this area is known, is primarily flat, fertile plains - probably floodplains back when the 2 rivers really got going, which sadly, hasn't happened here for a looong time. The place is so flat, we could see oncoming traffic about 1-2 minutes before it got to us. In the case of the larger road trains, it was occasionally longer. It made for an entertaining game - seeing how long it was between first spotting a vehicle, to having it finally go past
We already knew that there was no accommodation available in Wentworth, so had booked a room in a town we’d previously never heard of - Euston, about another hour or so along the highway. It had the dual advantage of being on the right side of the Murray &, more importantly, had a Motel with a room available. Quite a nice room too, with a view of & access to the river via a sliding back door, as well as a short walk to the local take-away food store & bottle shop. Dinner - sorted. We ate at the little table just outside our room, looking down onto the Murray River to make sure no Victorians were attempting a river crossing over the border. If we'd seen any, there was a Highway Patrol officer in the room next to ours & another a couple of rooms along - their cars were parked out front. Later on that night, we heard them leaving, obviously on night shift. The patrol car engines were so loud when they fired up, I'm pretty sure the whole Motel heard them leaving!
On to Ardlethan tomorrow, an even smaller town than Euston, but one I’ve at least heard of, mostly because an old friend of mine is the Head Teacher at the school & we’ll be catching up with her when we get there...
Kilometres travelled: 450
A call to the Silly Goat Cafe to book a table for 2 was answered by a friendly voice who cheerfully told me the cafe was closed until Thursday, so after a fruitless search for a viable alternative (even the one down the road we went to yesterday was closed today), it’s a McDonalds breakfast for us. At least it was also right next to the Shopping Centre & the petrol station - both places we needed to visit before leaving town
I have a vague grid of Broken Hill in my head by now, so was able to find the way to the Silver City Highway heading south without incident or any navigational help from Laura, or Jeeves - our Google Guide. Well - Goodbye Broken Hill, it’s always a pleasure to visit. I'm sure times will get better & your businesses can afford to open more often soon
Apart from a brief photo stop at some power lines disappearing in a vaguely southerly direction & the bones of dozens & dozens of roadkill animals along its shoulders, there’s not much to report about the Silver City Highway heading southward, except that it seems the Bra Tree is no longer on it. This was a tree festooned with bras, as a memorial to a local woman who died of breast cancer, but also served as a way of raising awareness of the various charities funding research & respite care. It had been pretty easy to spot on our last trip on the road & this time we were expecting it, but it’s gone... the highway is a less colourful & slightly less silly place without it
Edit Update: Apparently, it is still there, at least according to Google, anyway. So maybe we just missed it... Here's a picture of it from 2014
The other thing we were expecting to see this time was the Perry Sandhills - a place we completely missed last time we travelled down this highway, only discovering their existence long after we’d gone past them. So this time, the hills were firmly on our radar. It turned out they were only a few kilometres outside the town of Wentworth & a quick right turn off the highway brought us to them, again without any navigation assistance... you can actually see them from the highway, so don’t ask how we’d missed them the last time...
We did think they’d be bigger though... According to the little information board, the sandhill area is about 7 square kilometres. To my mind, it looked like a giant sandpit, or the dumping ground for a future concrete construction, before the cement trucks arrive
Tell you what though... it’s quite a big area when you’ve climbed, stumbled & staggered up the tallest dune & are making your way across the hills in the blasting wind & trying to shield your camera from the sand that it whips up. But it’s amazing... a little slice of the Sahara only a few kilometres from the conjunction of the 2 biggest rivers in New South Wales... more on that in a minute
In the middle of the hills, is the ‘God Tree’ - a 6-700yr old ghost gum whose trunk has been gradually buried under about 6 metres of sand, so only the canopy is above ground... & the canopy must be at least 10 metres high. The main branches are incredibly thick & where they converge at the buried trunk, it reminded me of the sequoias in Yosemite Park... under that sand must be one massive trunk!!
Aboriginal people in the area used to hunt the prehistoric megafauna here - bones have been found of Diprotodon, a giant wombat, Thylacine tigers, as well as the older, larger ancestors of today’s kangaroos, who to my mind, are quite big enough... ever seen a fully-grown male red kangaroo? The tribes used to take shelter on the hills when the 2 rivers flooded, as did the early white settlers of the area
We took Laura on the dirt road that doesn’t quite encircle the sandhill area, to give her a chance to engage the 4 wheel drive & to get some new mud to show off after I found a few puddles that, somehow, were unavoidable. No, really, they were... Then back on the highway for the last couple of kilometres into town & down to the joining point of the Murray & Darling rivers. The Darling flows down through central & western New South Wales - we’d actually crossed it a couple of times in the last few days as we were heading in the same direction - & the Murray has its origins on the Snowy Mountain range in the south-east, then flows westward until it reaches the Southern Ocean over in South Australia. The Murray is also the official border between NSW & Victoria for much of its course, so at this point, it was as close as we were going to get to travelling interstate, since our visit to Cameron’s Corner was washed out
The Riverina region, as this area is known, is primarily flat, fertile plains - probably floodplains back when the 2 rivers really got going, which sadly, hasn't happened here for a looong time. The place is so flat, we could see oncoming traffic about 1-2 minutes before it got to us. In the case of the larger road trains, it was occasionally longer. It made for an entertaining game - seeing how long it was between first spotting a vehicle, to having it finally go past
We already knew that there was no accommodation available in Wentworth, so had booked a room in a town we’d previously never heard of - Euston, about another hour or so along the highway. It had the dual advantage of being on the right side of the Murray &, more importantly, had a Motel with a room available. Quite a nice room too, with a view of & access to the river via a sliding back door, as well as a short walk to the local take-away food store & bottle shop. Dinner - sorted. We ate at the little table just outside our room, looking down onto the Murray River to make sure no Victorians were attempting a river crossing over the border. If we'd seen any, there was a Highway Patrol officer in the room next to ours & another a couple of rooms along - their cars were parked out front. Later on that night, we heard them leaving, obviously on night shift. The patrol car engines were so loud when they fired up, I'm pretty sure the whole Motel heard them leaving!
On to Ardlethan tomorrow, an even smaller town than Euston, but one I’ve at least heard of, mostly because an old friend of mine is the Head Teacher at the school & we’ll be catching up with her when we get there...
Kilometres travelled: 450
