Mt Hope & Cobar
We set off from Gum Bend Lake early in the morning and went back into Condobolin to ask at the visitor information centre about the condition of roads and how to get through to Mt Hope, because there has been a lot of rain recently. The ladies there couldn't help much but one of them did say that she usually drives a road from Condo' to Kiacatoo and if it was going to be flooded anywhere, we would know sooner rather than later. So we headed off into the unknown, our first major detour off the highways and main roads. We didn't have anything to be worried about, we saw water beside the road in a couple of places where the (Lachlan) river had swollen but it never crossed the road. After about 3 hours drive we arrived at Mt Hope and called into the pub for an ice cream and watched a couple of road trains pull up and leave again. Then we went back to the fossicking spot only 1.5km from the pub. We spent about an hour and a half digging and picking around finding lots of little quartz crystals and a couple of bigger ones. That doesn't sound very exciting but they were proper crystals with formed sides and a point, some still joined together. We had some lunch there and Callen loved digging around in the holes too and finding rocks and sticks to play with. Then it was onto Cobar and the drive was made a lot more interesting by spotting wild goats - there were heaps!!! We arrived in Cobar at about 4pm so had a little drive around town and got some supplies before pulling up at a rest stop for the night. In the morning we visited the heritage centre and learnt about all the copper mining that has been done in the area. They had a really good display of mining, pastoral, agricultural, social and railway history from the region so there is something for everyone! After a quick walk around the park, Callen was getting tired and we decided to drive as much as we could while he slept. From Cobar onwards we played 'spot the Emu' (with a few kangaroos) which made a nice change from all the wild goats! We made it to Willcania, which was going to be our overnight stop in the caravan park but when we drove through the town it gave us both the creeps. Most of the buildings had bars across the door and windows, a lot of the properties had really high fences and abandoned buildings were boarded up with corrugated iron. To top it off, Kent didn't like the fact that there were more than a dozen birds of prey circling overhead. It was just creepy. So even though Callen was getting cranky, he had to suck it up so we could keep going to Broken Hill!