On the Road Again!

(this post is post-dated).....

Yup, 'tis true we're on the road again...this time via the great Australian Outback (which is unfortunately not the famous red dirt road....it's currently green because of all the rain this year). While the plans were to slowly make our way around this massive country (and continent), the tides have turned and a neat job offer on a cattle station has left us packing up the 16 year old 4WD and driving 4000 km through the desert.  Sounds like an adventure right?

Although I haven't finished (or hell, even started to talk about Vietnam and Cambodia)), I thought it best to skip through them and periodically venture into the world of Asian blogging in the future. For now, I must capture the now and with the help of a trusty laptop this can be done!

We left Sydney on Wednesday (a day early, which is why I haven't called home yet). We decided to get a jump start on the road to ease a bit of the driving allotted for the first day. It's good we did because it took us a while to get of the Blue Mountain Range west of Sydney. We brought a tent along for cheap accommodations (and a true 'outback' experience), and stayed the first night in Mudgee.

The camping ground wasn't exactly Ontario Parks style; in fact, it felt more like a trailer park to me.  We made camp in the 'grassy' open field behind all the semi to fully permanent caravans, which at first seemed nice as we were the only ones in the field. ....then I noticed the birds, then when they stopped attacking each other, the mozzies and flies showed up.  Oh man, by the time we got the tent pitched, a dinner half cooking we'd collectively received closed to a million bites, and I had more bugs flying at my head than I cared for. I think I few might have even ended up in the frying pan (We could barely see the food, and when it was done we quickly scooped it out, then inhaled it so we could get out of the flies (I guess the 'no food in the tent'  rule has stuck with me). Within 15 minutes of this occurring we were sleeping.......i guess when times dictate it, one really can get a move on....and one can suddenly become very tired at 9pm....

Going to bed so early i guess isn't so bad when one is awoke at 5 am by the very same birds that so pleasantly greeted us on the way in....this time the noise was like a symphony though, and while a 5 am wake up call is not ideal, the  Galahs waking up a sleepy camper is a much better alarm than the standard buzzzzzzz of my travel alarm clock.....we spent enough time to eat, pack up and use the 'facilities', then sped off 800 km to a small mining town called Broken Hill.

While the swarming bugs, moths and all things flying were enough to make even a bug lover nuts (is there such a thing as a bug lover?), the morning toilets were pretty interesting in terms of bugs.....there was one that looked like an ordinary house fly who ate an enlargement cookie from Alice in Wonderland. It was the size of my entire hand!  I would have taken a picture, but my approach to this sort of thing was 'do no disturb the unmoving thing, it has wings, and you don't want it flying at you". I told max about it and he told me that when those things get stuck in a mosquito electric trap, then tend to sizzle.....ewwwwwwww

Leaving the camp site at 7 am, arriving in Broken Hill at 7 pm, with a short sojourn in Dubbo meant a very long day of driving.....at one point the GPS said, "in 100 meters enter roundabout. Take third exit. Drive 547 kilometers"..... you could practically see that 547 kilometres in the distance (the road is THAT long and THAT straight). I think this is probably what the Canadian prairies look like....minus the 'watch out for kangaroos' signs posted everywhere.

In the 700 km between Dubbo and Broken Hill we drove through exactly three towns.  One, Nyngan, two, Cobar , (the first mining town on the route, copper is the name of its gain), the third town was Wilcannia.....I don't even remember going through this one....really...primarily because by 'town' they could mean anything from a small town to a gas station on the side of the road….then we hit  Broken Hill, population 18 000, home of BHP Billiton, the largest mining company in Australia. (this is where it started).  The town itself is quite large for outback standards, and we were excited to see a town after driving for 3 hours, passing exactly four transport trucks (called road trains here), and two other vans of backpackers. One neat thing about Broken Hill is that they have an art gallery with Picasso and a Dali painting (which is impressive seeing as it is about 800km from a town over 30 000 people, and all the streets in this town are named after metals. We stayed on Argent street (at a backpackers),  other streets included Silver st, Cobalt St, Bromide St, sulphide st,  and garnet street. Pretty cool I thought.