Dave's Odyssey - Outback New South Wales

The car as camper

The last week of August, Dave drove to Outback New South Wales alone in our white station wagon.  The station wagon was set up to provide a place to sleep, in the event no accommodation was available or if Dave wanted to "camp" somewhere.  He left on Monday and returned on Friday before noon.  On the first day, he drove 12 hours from Copacabana to Cobar (point A to C on the map).  Monday night I called every hotel in Cobar, but everything was booked.  Cobar is near to the mines - present day miners sleep in the hotels during the week.

Dave drove down the road to a roadside rest area where a few other people were already camping.  He slept over night in the sleeping bag and on the air mattress in the back of the wagon.  On Tuesday morning, Dave drove another 8 hours from Cobar through White Cliffs (point D) on to Tibooburra, his destination.  It's 200 km of dirt road from White Plains to Tibooburra.  He spent 2 nights at the Tooles Family Hotel .

While in Tibooburra, Dave went fossicking.  He said he found metal cans left by the miners a century ago.  The soil is red with iron.  The car still oozes the red soil from crevices.  Dave saw a mother emu and young just a few feet away, red and grey kangaroos, wild pigs, lizards, sheep.  He didn't take many pictures - and the ones he did take were corrupted.

Dave on his return

Dave chose to drive "The Cut Line" - 400 km of dirt road from Tibooburra to Bourke - for his return journey.  He said it was amazing.  He saw kangaroos boxing in the middle of the road.  They would stand there and watch as the car approached, before eventually moving off the road because there was no human around for miles.


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Wattle Flat over the Blue Mountains

Over the Blue Mountains

Sunset over my new car

We traveled over the Blue Mountains for the first time in August.

On the way, we stopped at the dealer to pickup my new car - see previous post. It really handles well and has good power even fully loaded.

We traveled on The Bells Line of Road - a more scenic route, and we were told less road construction. In the mountains there were many apple orchards. There were also several roadside stands with fresh apple pie. The pie was delicious.

The country is very different to what we see along the coast. Open spaces. Wild kangaroo and wallaby. It was the first time we had seen wild kangaroo. We also saw many dead wombat on the side of the road. I had no idea they were so large.

The Blue Gum cabin.

Countryside

The cabin we stayed in, The Blue Gum, was wonderful. It had a really nice wood stove and plenty of wood, which kept the main area toasty. There was frost overnight. The bathroom had a whirlpool tub and a modern composting toilet. Zoe was freaked out by the toilet.

At night, we could see many details of the Milky Way. The sky was so vast and clear. Amazing!

Countryside

Sofala is a sleepy little town - but the tavern was doing a brisk business

Above - Tristan's gold spec and Chris our teacher.

We went gold panning while there. We hired an amateur geologist to teach us how. Dave and I got into it. Tristan found the largest spec of gold. I even found a few specs of platinum. The kids lost interest after a while but went down the creek to build dams.

We enjoyed our overnight in the country.