Finally.......

Bloody hell.........finally we’re back on the road. Might be on four wheels, but that’s just details.

Actually, neither of us were sure whether Gordon would be able to sit for any length of time, let alone over dirt roads, so I came up with an ace plan ( well, I thought it was ace). We planned to leave Cobar about lunchtime on Saturday and head for Bourke along the highway, so I suggested an early morning trip out to Mount Grenfell, the aboriginal rock art place that I’d ridden to a few days before. Its only 65 kms from Cobar, but more importantly, half on sealed road, the other half on pretty rough dirt track, and if he could survive the 130 kms round trip, he’d be OK for Bourke.

I did keep a careful eye on him though...

And he survived, which was just as well because there wasn’t really any alternative, and off we went at lunchtime. Yahoo.

And he's got a great black eye. The bruising on his arse is even better but he won't let me photograph that....

We bought a ramp and some tie downs before we left Cobar and both bikes fit onto the tray beautifully. 

Gordon’s will stay on the back until he’d OK to ride, but I need to get mine on and off so that I can ride each day. Whilst I’m happy to drive all day, I need to ride my bike; that’s what I came here to do and even a crash won’t stop me, especially as it wasn’t even my crash.

But anyway, Bourke was pretty much as expected: isolated, hot, dusty and tatty. But cool in an odd sort of way, the start of the outback proper, and a bit frontier-ish. 

There were several signs along the highway for the Outback Fishing challenge. The what? Its so bloody dry out here and there is no water in any of the creeks and only a very little bit in the Darling, so I dont know what they catch. Maybe dried fish or something. Actually its probably something to do with catching non native fish, but I like the dried fish idea better.

Then we got asked if we were pig baiting. Pig baiting? What? Apparently you ride through the scrub with bits of meat , chucking it out and enticing wild pigs to follow, while somebody in the ute follows and shoots them. So no, we’re not pig baiting mate, just driving through the outback with two postie bikes on way to Adelaide.

Bourke used to be a major port, on the Darling River, served by paddleboas, and dealing in cattle, sheep, and wool. It’s not now, but the trappings are still there, including a bridge that has now been bypassed and preserved as a historical monument. Its a vertical lift bridge, where the middle bit winds up to let paddleboats through.

And there were loads of cockatoos in the trees by the river. As the evening drew on,there must have been about a 1000 setting up home for the night in the trees. And the din factor was something else. Cockatoos are not the quietest of birds anyway, but a thousand of them together in the trees - beyond noisy.

So as Gordon had clearly survived the ride to Bourke, next day, we headed for White Cliffs via Wilcannia along the dirt road, all 350 kms of it. It was pretty rough but good enough and the ute coped well. 

It was a bit skiddy at times when the sand got deep but I just kept the speed steady and let it go where it wanted, guiding it to keep it on the main track.

Its like driving in snow, no jerky or sudden movements, constant speed and just keep going. Not that easy on a bike of course, yet I would still  ride that road, even now I know what the surface is like.

There are two very small settlements along it between Bourke and Wilcannia, Louth and Tilpa, and it would have taken much longer of course and would have been tough but its definitely do able.

We stopped briefly in Wilcannia for fuel. Its a town that was clearly once quite successful but has seen better days. 

The bloke in the petrol station ( two pumps down a back street) had lived here all his life and reckoned that the police have now got things under control (Wilcannia has a bit of a reputation as being rough) and said that the National Parks were partly to blame because the buy up land round the place and effectively kill it as nobody can then farm it. Mind you, he then said that the young folk don’t want to work it anyway, so its a sort of catch 22. And nobody shops there anymore because its expensive and most people can drive for a couple of hours and bulk buy in bigger towns like Cobar and Broken Hill. Same story the world over, and down to changing patterns of trade, demand and supply I guess.

Not many people about either, just a few dogs and this emu.

So, on to White Cliffs then, and  a sealed road which was quite a novelty after a whole day on the dirt. 

White Cliffs is famous as the previous centre of Opal mining out here, semi precious stones that had their heyday in the late 1800s. People still live and mine out there but nowhere near on as big a scale as they once did.

Its a really odd place though because as you approach, it looks like a collection of sheds in the middle of the desert, which essentially, it is. But then upon closer inspection, little caves in the hillside become evident, dugouts. These were where many of the old pioneer miners lived, having scraped shelter from the sun out by hand. Even today, you can buy one and just extend it as you wish, digging out rooms as will, but usually with a drill these days. There is a school there too - with just five pupils, but rather disappointingly, that's above ground.

And the school of the air - which is all around here and which as a kid I found a fascinating concept - is now high tech. Apparently, they have screens and teacher and pupils can see each other, and the books and work is all downloads. No more special delivery parcels at the beginning of each term.

There are several underground hotels constructed this way so we had to stay in one of them overnight. 

There is also a  solar power station in White Cliffs, several rows of what look like satellite dishes but they are actually parabolic solar panels which concentrate the suns rays and turn it into power which sorts out about half the demand. Again, it looks pretty surreal out there in the desert, surrounded by nothing but a few sheds and scrub.

After White cliffs, we drove to Broken Hill via Wilcannia and sealed roads. The dirt road looked inviting but the fuel place was shut in white Cliffs and I wasn’t sure if we’d make it all the way, so I opted for the shorter route. 

Plus I thought I’d be a bit kinder to Gordon who is actually finding it harder than he lets on. Its much easier to sleep on a smooth surface than dirt. Him that is, not me....

Broken Hill is, as the brochures say, smack bang in the middle of nowhere, nearer to Adelaide than Sydney although its still in NSW, and half an hour behind the rest of the state, operating on Central (South Australia, NT time) rather than eastern standard time. But half an hour? Come on, whats all that about? A full hour maybe, but half an hour is literally a half arsed effort.

This place is famous for silver, which in the early days was mistaken for tin until somebody realised. Its actually got one of the biggest silver deposits in the world and is sometimes known as Silver City. There’s still much mining going on here and evidence of it is all around, with bare hillsides, old machinery now turned into heritage stuff. And some great street names - Sulphide Street, Oxide Street and the catchy Bromide Street.

We’re planning on staying here for a few days as we have some stuff to do, like mend Gordon’s bike ( we bought most of the bits yesterday) change the chain and sprockets on my bike, do some washing, and repack what we have so that we can find things. It got chucked in the ute and there is currently no system to anything, so a bit of sorting needs to be done. And we’ll have a good look around.