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Day 24 – White Cliffs to Bourke |
Bourke, Australia
Todays Challenge – To photograph at least one more of those rare and elusive outback trees.
As we rise this morning we have to shower in the ablutions block as the underground rooms are to small to include on-suite facilities. We head down to the dining room for breakfast and meet up with the same grey nomads we had dinner with last night. Rod packs our very dusty car and we are on the road again at 8.45am.
At about 175 km from Cobar we spot a heard of wild goats and suddenly a glint of light catches our eye, can it be one of the elusive outback trees? As we approach we notice two trees about one hundred metres apart, one sprouting shoes and the other bottles of all colours and sizes. We photograph both and declare the challenge met.
We refuel at Cobar and Rod notices that we have broken one of the cars driving lights. Not to bad after traveling 9000 km Rod exclaims. We head across the road to the Great Western Hotel where we have lunch sitting in the sun on the expansive deck.
We leave the Barrier Highway here and decide that it has been the worst road so far on our travels, however one hour out of Bourke we encounter more road works and stop at the red light. We contemplate sinking a slab once again, but we dont have on. So much for that good idea! Perhaps we are just suffering plain old outback madness as opposed to Nullarbor madness, where any excuse for a beer sounds good.
Deb has already planned our activities for the afternoon as we check into the information centre for directions and a local town map. We book into the Bourke Bridge Inn, located on the banks of the Darling River then drive to the new Back O’ Bourke Cultural Centre and buy a combined entry and Paddle Steamer Cruise which we will board in the morning.
We then head to a small bar that we spotted next to our Motel but it is closed so we chill down some drinks back in our room and relax while waiting to be picked up by the Bowling Club courtesy bus that takes us into town where we have Chinese for dinner (not very good chinese mind you).