The Road to Lake Eyre – Part 1

After what seems like an eternity (well, November 2021 is a long time ago) of hanging around, doctors’ visits, tests, hospitals etc, we are finally free to travel.

We left Darlington Park as planned; well almost. Peter had to say goodbye to everyone we’d met, then a couple of likely lads came around to check out his rig, so a ten am departure turned into an eleven thirty departure, an hour and a half later than planned, but leave we did, eager to get to Lake Eyre.

Our first overnight should have been Goondiwindi. We didn’t make it. We would have, had we had another hour and a half of daylight (funny that). Instead we pulled over in a rest area, had leftover lamb shoulder and brown rice for dinner, (it was even nicer the next day Rae), watched a couple of episodes of Big Bang, and had an early night.

The next day we passed a lot of cotton farms as we drove west. This always seems a strange choice of crop for such a drought plagued area, but the cotton fields sure are pretty.

We spent the night at the oval in Talwood. What a great spot, with the oval on one side and scrub land on the other, and well away from the road. Very clean amenities, dump point water and rubbish bins. What more could you ask for?

The next night we revisited Wallum creek in Bollon. Our last stay here lasted seven days, this one would be much shorter but just as nice.

We couldn’t help but notice the large number of travellers heading west. And Bollon was no exception, travellers swarmed in late in the afternoon and swarmed out early the next morning. After a call to Peter’s sister, we realised why. The Big Red Bash was on, (https://www.bigredbash.com.au/home) and it was a sell-out. 10,000 tickets had been sold all around the country. That got us to thinking, narrow dirt roads, a gazillion cars, trailers, and caravans, all travelling the same roads as us… Hmm, maybe it was time to go to Plan B.

Plan B would still get us to Lake Eyre in about the same time, but we would avoid the Big Bash traffic, including a two kilometre line up for fuel from the one outlet in town. Seriously, that’s what happened at the last Bash. Saying that, you get your fuel from the pub so you could have a beer while you wait, providing they don’t sell out. Again, that happened. But I digress, back to plan B.

Plan B means that instead of doing the Birdsville Track, we’d do the Strzelecki Track. The Strzelecki is a bit more challenging, (and I’m not just talking about trying to pronounce it). But I believe they have started to seal it, so if we want to do it while it is still a “track” now is the time.

We were excited to be leaving Bollon after our three-night stay. Peter got us up and out of bed by 5:30am eager to follow Plan B, our next overnight stop, Hungerford in NSW. We stopped in Cunnamulla briefly to empty the toilet cassette, top up our fuel, (at $2.49 per litre I might add) and fill up our water tanks. You can’t be driving through the desert without plenty of water.

Later that day, we pulled over in a little town called Eulo so that I could take over driving for a while. Three kilometres out of Eulo we turned left onto dirt road. Ahead of us was four hundred and eighty-five kilometres of dirt which would take us to Tibooburra which is our jump-off point to join the Strzelecki Track via Cameron Corner. From Tibooburra to Marree is a further 680 kilometres of dirt track. This is the start of our Lake Eyre adventure. Bring it on!

So, the question I’ll leave you all with is this: How the hell did we end up in Bourke?

See you out there somewhere

On tow and on the go!