What is Went worth?

Quite a bit as it gives us a half-way (about 850km) break on our trip to Port Lincoln!

We got away at 6:30 which was pretty good as it meant we'd get to Wentworth in good time.  The weather was fine for driving as we set off, with cloud and wind but no rain.  Here is the situation near Jugiong.

Going along the Hume we noticed a car overtake us with no number plates, which seemed a good way of avoiding speed cameras and similar infringements on liberty.  A little further we found said car again with the driver discovering that the Plods do not approve of such strategies and were having a conversation, which I suspect could do very bad things for their average speed, bank balance and future driving plans.

 Autumn has arrived in Wagga as shown by the foliage!

 Round about Wagga we noticed a lot of cars coming towards us in pulses which seemed a bit curious.  An interesting roadside sign promised "Balls baits and bullets" in Narranderah.  On the outskirts of the town we discovered the reason for the pulses: roadworks, fixing up problems that only the Roads engineers were aware of, at the intersection of the Newell and Sturt Highways.  Only about 5 minutes of delay

Once out heading towards the Hay Plain we noticed lots of motorbikes, including many three-wheelers towing trailers, coming towards us.  This continued for the rest of the day.  (That got solved the next day somewhere near Renmark where a sign talked about Ulysses MC AGM.)

Out on the Plain we encountered, as tradition requires, droving.  It was a tad un-traditional in that all the stock were Aberdeen Angus rather than Herefords or mixed breeds.

For many years we had crossed the Plain with no sight of anything to do with cotton.  On both our last two traverses we have seen heaps.  Perhaps we were a little earlier this time but it seemed to be everywhere in vast acreages.  No wonder the farmers are in an uproar about restrictions on irrigators in the Southern Murray-Darling Basin.  This image is a paddock of bolls.

Some harvested rolls: we crossed with many trucks carting these off to ...?

This snap shows: a line of bales in a paddock; the brown stems left after picking,; and a small amount of the whit stuff that always seems to accumulate along the roadside in a cotton area.

We wondered if the cotton was responsible for the dearth of emus.  At one point we thought we might not see any for the trip but a few - perhaps 7 in total were spotted towards the end of the trip.  There were very few birds around except Ravens.  A few Black Kites and Kestrels, 1 Pied Butcherbird and a couple of Black-shouldered Kites.

In my view the Plain ends at Balranald.  On what we saw, so does prosperity.   While the houses still looked OK quite a few businesses in the town looked to be closed (permanently, not just on Saturday afternoon).  On the highway out the other side we encountered another lot of road works that delayed us again.  I know roads have to be maintained but no-one here seemed to be working except the driver of the pilot vehicle.  All the others seemed to be sitting around talking about obesity - or at least demonstrating it.

This also gave the caravans a chance to bunch up and make driving slow.  While this is a further tradition I had thought it had been dispensed with as on our recent trips vans moved along reasonably quickly.  Perhaps the Hume Highway is different to the North South roads such as the Newell?

Somewhere around this point a truck was kind enough to spit a rock at our windshield.  I didn't notice a new chip so carried on.

On getting close to Wentworth we called in at a fuel station in Dareton.  It had closed but as a friendly local explained (there were no instructions on the pumps) there was a terminal on the wall that allowed one to get fuel.  It merged that as is often the case in rural aral areas the advertised price for diesel was for the dirty stuff that trucks use and car diesel was about 2 cents a litre dearer.  Grrrr.  It then emerged (again no instructions) there wasn't a pay-for-fill option.  However you could put in an amount of $400 and they'd only take what you used, with the remaining amount staying as an open order for 7 days.  Trust us - sure wouldn't.  them we'll get fuel somewhere else, of need be in Renmark the next morning.

As it turned out we got fuel in Wentworth as a servo operated by a human.  After shifting minimal kit into our room at the Central Motel (which allowed the small dog in the room - HUGE  bouquet) we went for  walk around the riverbank.  This is the  Darling, which merges with the Murray nearby.

There seemed to be a lot of water in the Rivers:presumably there has been good rain from cyclones in the head waters of the Darling in Queensland.

A statue of John Egge an immigrant from China who seems to have been one of the biggest traders on the River.  Or, in a flood, the main street of Wentworth which he sailed his boat down!

A memento of the old days.  I'm not sure if this paddle steamer moves or is just there to look good!

Although we have been to Wentworth before I do like a good War Memorial.

After the early start and a longish drive an early and solid night sleep.

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Not a hat but Trilby

Bird of the Day Spiny-cheeked Honeyeaters.  Not common for us, colourful and noisy.

Plant of the Day: Peppercorn trees at Newey Reservoir.

Scene of the Day;  Balloon going up at weather station

Art of the day:  Shades and painting at Cobar pool.

Typically Australian thing of the day:  Long straight red dirt roads.  Only typical for ~2% of the population, but common over about 90% of the area of the country

Maximum Temperature 19  Minimum temperature 2.4

Distance traveled  with camper  150 without camper 10

While the caravan park in Cobar was on the Barrier Highway this was not such a busy road: possibly a fair bit of traffic between Brisbane and Perth uses it, but not much else.

One of the "things to do in Cobar" highlighted by the lady at the visitor centre was watching the weather balloon go up at (I think) 8:45.  This is the finale of a tour of the Regional weather station starting at 8:15.  With my interest in weather this was too good to miss so we headed off.  The original plan was for me to do the tour while Frances and Tammy went for a walk nearby.  However it turned out most the early part of proceedings was in the paddock where all the instruments are located so they tagged along too.

What the tour turned out to be was following the duty meteorologist as he did the daily readings.  There are also automatic readings for some items but the clerical stuff is good back up.  As well as all the usual things (wet/dry bulb temperature, anemometer readings) this station has an evaporation pan.  

I was aware from an online conversation with BoM people that this was not an automated process but was surprised how 'clunky', it was.  In effect water is added, using a large measuring cylinder, to the pan to restore the level to a standard.  As it was cold and not too windy it took 1 cylinder full (about 2mm evaporation from memory) to top up the pan.  In summer it can take 4 or 5 cylinders to do the job

The launch of the balloon, which I had expected to be a manual process was in fact automated.  Our guide explained that there had been issues with the system recently so it may not happen.  This first image is the equipment chuntering along getting ready to launch.

Everything went as planned today, and this is the moment of release, with the balloon heading skywards.  It will go up to about 40k feet before the envelope bursts and the small transponder falls - there is something to stop it coming down like a stone, but I can't remember what, having lost the appropriate notebook (see post for Fort Bourke later).

Our other call was to the Newie Reservoir for birding.  This was a most excellent place with a large body of water and a pleasant track around the edge.  Waterbirds were not greatly in evidence - again details have gone with my notebook!

Frances thought the arrangement of shade sails and parasols at the town swimming pool was very artistic.

So it was off on the Mulya Rd towards Louth.  The first 50km of this are bitumen courtesy of a large mine out that way.  I presume they, as heavy users of the road, contributed to the cost of the work.  It then turned to dirt, mainly of a red nature, with a few ruts and corrugations, but as the Cobar Shire component had been graded a couple of weeks earlier was (mostly) easy to cover at 80-100kph.

As it was school holidays this cockie had his son out helping to muster a few sheep.  The dogs (I think  - it may have been the son) seemed to need frequent advice about where to go!

Here is the road.

Unlike some of the stuff we had driven through on the way to Cobar it wasn't MBF (mind-blowingly flat) but did qualify as MMBN (miles and miles of bloody nothing).  from looking at the Google earth image

I was expecting to find some large and obvious watercourses on which to do some birding, but they didn't stand out much when driving.

The clouds were attractive.

After about 50km of dirt the road surface deteriorated somewhat, especially in the matter of corrugations.  Yes, we had just entered Bourke Shire, and it seemed they - quite reasonably - didn't attach high priority to a road that just led people to go and spend their money in Cobar!

After driving through the village of Louth and crossing the Darling we headed out 20km to Trilby Station.  We had hoped to have a powered site here, but the lady who welcomed us explained that there were some families doing father-children bonding stuff in the bunkhouse so it might be more peaceful out along the River.  With some trepidation we agreed to this so set up camp (including our solar panels).

To say the least it was a very peaceful spot, right on the 10m high banks of the Darling, with pelicans croaking and splashing in the River below.  Darkness fell as did the temperature and Frances left the fire to cook tea.

Here is the fireplace.  Apart from reducing the fire-risk by containing the blaze the tin backdrop did an excellent job of directing the heat back out at us.

Small dog snuggled up in her home base.