April to June 2013 - Home to Bourke

Well here we are 8 weeks into retirement and absolutely loving every minute of it, so we thought it was time to catch everybody up on the past 2 months.

It took us the whole of the first week to finish off packing the house and the usual finish off things that have to be done.  The sale of the house went through without a hitch on the Friday and we moved into one of the local Geelong caravan parks to get used of the caravan and find out what we still needed before we headed off.

We got going on the Wednesday of the first week of retirement and went to Moama to spend the first week on the Murray river with family and friends. Leann coaxed the Kookaburras down out of the tree with some raw meat. 

Since then we have moved on to Corowa to catch up with some of Judy's side of the family where we stayed in a bush setting caravan park, almost right on the river. We had a night out at the RSL Club and were lucky enough to win one of the Friday night raffles which kept us in meat for the next week or so.

Swan Hill was our next stop for a couple of nights and then on to Mildura where we stayed for a week.  Buronga caravan park is right on the river, just across from where the paddle steamer pulls up at the wharf in Mildura. 

The site we had was only 30 metres from the river so we had the Zodiac (inflatable boat) in the water almost every day.  Luckily I had time in Moama to build a little dismountable trailer to get the Zodiac to the waters edge and back without having to let it down at the end of every day.

We fished up and down the river, but couldn't even catch a carp.  The weather was fantastic for this time of the year until the second last day when it rained.  Being used to living from tank water at Sheoaks, we made up a water catchment system from an empty jam tin and a couple of hose fittings and caught the rain water off the roof of the awning which filled up the fresh water tank in the caravan so we didn't have to drink the horrible chlorinated water.  Saves buying bottled water for drinking.

We moved onto Broken Hill and had a good look around the mines and the galleries.  Pro Hart's gallery stood out the most to us.  This man had a wonderful talent for painting outback scenery.  There is also a gallery that houses a painting that took the artist 2 years to complete and is 12 metres high and 100 metres long.  This is the world's largest acrylic painting on canvas.  It depicts scenes of the outback from all around the larger Broken Hill area.  We took a day trip to Silverton where the Mad Max films were produced.  A lot of the old bits and pieces that we say out there on our last visit 25 years ago have now been moved into a museum of such and has deteriorated a lot since we last saw them.  Silverton is now more "touristy" with 2 cafes, the old pub (now without the horse that used to walk into the bar), and 3 or 4 galleries.  There is a guy there who carves coins.  He takes a real coin and carves away all the flat areas of the coin, just leaving the raised sections.  A $2.00 carved coin ends up costing over $100 but quite unique.  Not sure if it is legal to deface the queens currency?

The Mundi Mundi plains just out of Silverton is just awesome.  You come over a rise and there is this huge plain spread out below you for about 180 degrees and as far as the eye can see. The RFDS base at Broken Hill is also well worth a visit as it gives a lot of the history of the early days of the flying doctor.  Next time you have a $20.00 note in your hand, have a good look at it as it shows the body chart that the RFDS doctors used to help people diagnose illnesses by description over the radio.  You will see that the body is divided up into numbered sections so that people could describe where their pain was.  Once the doctor knew what numbers they could then advise the patient to take so many of the tablets in the numbered first aid kit.

Broken Hill is trying to promote tourism more and we came across a lady painting this painting on the footpath in the main street.  The lady is very talented and did this 3D painting in just 2 days.  It just looked like a hole in the ground that you could walk down into.




While we were at Broken Hill, we picked up a pamphlet advertising a station stay at Trilby Station which is about 400 kilometres north east, and decided to head there. 

The last day in Broken Hill saw 20 mm of rain which was nice to fill the rain water tank up again, but also closed the road out to Trilby, as the last 200 kilometres is a gravel road which follows the Darling river up from Wilcannia.

Not to be ones to back away from a challenge we headed off to Wilcannia which is a sealed road all the way.  Everyone had told us that Wilcannia was a rough town and all the windows were bared up to stop the native people from busting things up, but we were up for the challenge as we are not phased at all by what other people tell us.  The old caravan park had just been resurrected by this very enthusiastic fellow who works with the aborigines and has cleaned it up with their help and made it habitable again.  It is right on the banks of the Darling River with huge river red gums growing all along the river bank.  We booked in for 2 nights but ended up staying for 4 nights and had a very relaxing time.  No problems at all.  We got talking to the lady in the coffee shop and she told us a bit of the history of the place.  Back in the paddle steamer days, Wilcannia used to be one of the biggest inland ports on the Darling River.  They used to have a wharf that could load or unload 13 paddle steamers.  There are still some old sandstone buildings just begging for somebody to restore them to their original grandeur.  It's a pity that more people don't stay there as it is a wonderful place.  We have spoken to a lot of travelers since then who said they wouldn't even get out of their cars apart from at the service station to get fuel.  They were surprised when we told them of our time in Wilcannia. 

The road up through Tilpa to Trilby station was still closed due to the wet conditions so we decided that White Cliffs would be a good place for a day or so as it is still on a bitumen road and only 93 klm's away.  What a great little place with of course most of it being underground.  The caravan park had no trees or grass but we thought we would give it a go.  We ended up staying 4 nights we were that taken with the place.  The people we met were fantastic.  Talk about a different breed of opal miners.  Luckily we parked the van just 1 spot away from an older couple who go there every year for 3 months to fossick for opals.  We didn't even have the van set up and the female of the couple came over to find out what we were all about.  Luckily we gave Wilcannia a good rap and she adopted us from there.  She hates people who talk badly about Wilcannia so we were just about locals to her after staying there for 4 nights.  She told us all about the town and how and where to find opal.  I was pegging down our washing line right beside the caravan and picked up a bit of opal right there.  How exciting.  We showed it to our new neighbour and she laughed and told us it was "podge" which is opal without any colour.  She went on to tell us that fossickers pick it up out in the opal fields and then just throw it out when they get back to their caravan and sort through what they had picked up for the day.  Disappointing, as I was just about ready to stake a claim.

We did use our newly acquired skills the next day out on the opal fields and did pick up a few pieces with some nice colour in.  Nothing of any great value, but a good keepsake of our visit to White Cliffs.  We know some folk whose father has lived and worked in White Cliffs for 30 or more years so we looked him up.  It's not that hard to find anybody out there as everybody knows everybody else, the trick is to find which underground mine they live in.  You get instructions like "go round the back of this hill and he is 3 dugouts past Jock's place".  That's fine once you find Jock's place.  We finally found him and spent some time with him down his mine wandering through a myriad of shafts and tunnels.  He has a wonderful setup with bedroom, pantry, workshop and wine cellar all underground where the temperature is constant most of the time.  All I could see was a lot of clay that has to be dug out and only a small seam  of opal.  I could see how the bug could get you.  It's a bit like the pokies, just one more dig and you could strike it rich.  We spoke to one miner who bought a working mine and claims he only dug 6 inches into the wall and struck it rich.  Most other miners in town tell you that it is a load of rubbish.  I don't think much gets declared to the tax department.

The last day we were in White Cliffs it rained again and once again the gravel road to Trilby Station was closed.

Underground at Jocks Place

Opal seam in the clay

We moved on to Cobar on the bitumen.  Cobar is a copper mining town and it was interesting to have a look at the open cut copper mine.  Not much else that interested us around Cobar so we moved onto Bourke after a couple of days.

Bourke is a fantastic outback farming community.  When I worked for Transwest Haulage, we were owned by the Swire Group.  Amongst a lot of other things, the Swire Group own Clyde Agriculture at Bourke.  We were always told that if we went to Bourke we should visit Clyde which is the biggest cotton farm in Australia.  We went out there and had a chat to the folk but there wasn't much to show us as the cotton harvest was finished.  It certainly is a big farm which has their own cotton gin as well.

There is an outback show called Back-O-Bourke which we enjoyed.  They have camels, Clydesdales and a working bullock team which they put through their paces.  There is also an excellent visitor centre showing the history of the area.  A diesel driven paddle vessel takes you along the Darling river to see the bird life.  The Darling River is a lot slower flowing so quite different from the Murray.

The Bourke Council has had an old 1923 vintage Crossley oil fueled stationary engine fully restored to working condition.  They start it every day so of course I had to go along.  It was good to compare the old engine to modern day engines.  It is a twin cylinder engine that weighs 16 tonnes, it has a 6 tonne flywheel and produces 138 BHP at 260 RPM.  It is 108.6 litres capacity.  To make a comparison to the engine in our Landcruiser, our engine is about 20 times smaller, 40 times lighter but produces almost double the horse power.  The council spent almost $100,000 to rebuild this engine and are now about to have 2 new pistons built as one has cracked.  An excellent effort by the Bourke Council to keep this bit of history alive.

Clydesdales and Bullock teams working at the "Back - O - Bourke" show in Bourke.

PV Jandra on the Darling river at Bourke.

This boat was built in 2000 and is fitted with a diesel engine which drives a generator to power 2 electric motors which drive each paddle wheel separately so the boat can turn in it's own length.

Frogmouth Owl at Kidmans Camp in Bourke.

There were 3 sitting in the tree only about 1 metre apart  They were very well camouflaged against the bark of the tree.

Campfire and poetry at Kidman's Camp in Bourke.

The husband and wife team that ran this show had songs and stories that they had written about towns and things that had happened all around the district.

They served up and excellent meal and the entertainment was definitely different.  I learnt a lot of local folk stories from around the area from them.

Restored Crossley engine at Bourke.

This engine will run on waste oil mixed with diesel and is extremely economical.

It has 2 cylinders but is called a twin cylinder engine as apposed to a 2 cylinder engine as both pistons go up and down together and each fire on alternate strokes.  A 2 cylinder would have one piston going up while the other piston is going down.

The road from Bourke to Louth and then on to Trilby Station finally opened again so we took this opportunity to go to Trilby.  What a fantastic place.  This is a 320,000 acre property right on the Darling River.  There are bush camp sites along the river but the river banks are very steep so we are camped on the billabong where we are only 8 metres from the waters edge.  Of course the Zodiac is in and we manage to putt up and down the billabong which is about 250 metres long and about 80 metres wide.  We have already been here 7 days and as we got about 15 mm of rain 3 nights ago, so we will have to stay at least another 3 until the roads open again.  No problem for us though as we have plenty of food and time to enjoy the place.

The owners here have done a good job with laying out the story of the farm and made maps so visitors can find their way around the points of interest on the property.  We spent half a day driving around just one small section of the property.

I actually caught a fish last night, it was only a carp but a good size about 18 inches long so a bit of fun all the same.  Only 2 yabbies which is disappointing but we keep trying.

Judy caught a big carp today all by herself.  First fish on the new rod.  I have never seen such a big carp.

We decided to feed the carp to the pelicans to see what they would do.  I sat up a tree and took some photos of them as they swam down the billabong looking for fish.  I was amazed at what happened.  The 5 pelicans swam down together and every few metres they "duck dived" in unison very gracefully.  We weren't sure if they were hunting the fish along or still looking for fish under the water.  All of a sudden, one of the pelicans spotted the fish that we had placed in the middle of the billabong and it took off after it, picked it up and tried to swallow it.  It seemed to have lost it's grip on the fish or it was too big and it had another go at getting it in it's bill.  it finally got it down.

This the photo sequence.

The pelicans swim in unison down the billabong.  We weren't sure if they were actually herding fish along or just looking for fish.

Every 3 or 4 metres or so they would dive under the water in unison very quietly and gracefully.  Again we couldn't understand if they actually had fish all "herded" together.

One of the pelicans noticed the dead fish that we had placed out in the billabong and took of from the rest of them to grab the fish.

We originally thought that the 5 pelicans were working together to catch fish, but once this one grabbed the dead fish it was "every pelican for it self" and there was no sharing.

The pelican took a big gulp to try to swallow the fish, but the fish was too big and too slippery and it almost dropped it.

The pelican splashed the fish around in the water trying to line it up again...

Got it down this time and none left for it's mate. 

After the pelican swallowed the fish it swam off up the billabong and left the rest of them to catch their own feed.

The owners of Trilby Station supply their guests with some really interesting facts about their station.  We found this information very interesting so we have reproduced some of that information.  See the post for Trilby

That's it for now.  Tomorrow (16/06/13) we leave Trilby Station and start heading down the Kidman Way towards Hay and then on to Barham back on the Murray River.