Day 5 24/05/2013 Tibooburra to Nappa Merrie (or so we thought!)
Not a cloud in the sky this morning.....but boy was it cold....Brrrr!
Beautiful sunrise. Headed into town after breakfast. Only the road to Broken Hill was open. This was in the wrong direction for us; but we had worked out an alternate itinerary just in case we could only go South. We headed back to camp to pack up. Got back to town and found that more roads had been opened......just not the one we wanted! We needed to fill one of our gas bottles; Dave got chatting to the guy and he had the local knowledge to show us a route on our map which would enable us to avoid the closed road. Yay! The only disappointment was that it was already 10.30am and we would not have time to visit Cameron Corner....which was one of the reasons for coming to this area. Oh well....something for next time!
Well.....the roads were passable but only just! We had some hair-raising moments as we, ( well, Dave really ), navigated the numerous muddy patches, bog holes and stretches of water all over the road!!! One particular stretch was about 100m long. Unlike 'We're Going on a Bear Hunt', we couldn't 'go through it', we had to find a way to 'go around it'. Trouble was we had stopped just in front of all the water, and the only option for a 'go-around' looked to be about 500m back! Do we reverse all that way with the trailer???? Do we turn around and possibly get bogged in the soft edges of the clay pan ???? In the end we did a combination of both and got through. Phew! The whole manoeuvre took about one hour!
It was quite fun passing through the gate in the Dingo Fence......$1000 fine for leaving the gate open!
Other hazards, apart from road conditions, were the usual 'roos, emu and cattle on the track (Black Angus mainly). We have also seen feral cats (boo) and dingoes.
The next bit of advice from our friendly guy in Tibooburra was to take a 'new road' ( not marked on any map.....he drew it on ours), to avoid a stretch of road criss-crossed by lots of creeks and likely to be very boggy. We did.....it was great....gravel, not dirt and no water. However we somehow missed where this road met the original track and so we drove quite a few km out of our way.....using up precious fuel in the process! Finally we joined into a more major road; turn left and we would be only 45 km from Innaminka....and fuel! So we did this, even though our destination of Nappa Merrie would have been only 12 km to the right!! We camped at the idyllic Cullyamurra Waterhole ( we last camped there following our Simpson Desert Trek), and enjoyed a beautiful sunset as we set up camp. As the sun went down, the full moon rose in the East and we relaxed with a glass of wine and wound down from quite an exciting but stressful day. Throughout the night we could hear dingoes howling.....no doubt at the full moon!!!! Hats off to Dave for exceptional 4WDriving today.