NSW Outback

On Thursday we left Broken Hill and travelled the 340 km east on the Barrier Highway to a small mining town called Cobar. Then on the Friday we travelled 340 km on to Dubbo. On Saturday we travelled a further 300 km to the country (as in music) capital of Australia - Tamworth. These were all just interesting overnight stops on our way back towards the coast. Tomorrow we head for Bellingen then onto Byron Bay by Monday. As there's not too much to write about for the past few days, I'll write a little about driving out here.

The roads from Mildura to Broken Hill, Broken Hill to Cobar and a couple of hours on from Cobar took us through the NSW outback. Driving here was an experience in itself. Don't get me wrong, we didn't go off road or anything (we only have a 2WD), we were on sealed highways all the way.

Long roads. Firstly the roads are really long, for as long as the eye can see in most places, the vast terrain either side was predominantly flat and terracotta coloured with clear bright blue sky. There was so little traffic on the road you couldn't help but be mildly concerned about what would happen if the car broke down.

Trucks. Trucks here are HUGE and every now and then the big daddy of them all, the road train would appear in front of you (or worse, behind you) like a monstrous apparition rising out of the heat haze from the road. Driving along quite happily at one point a car came towards us with a sign saying, 'oversize vehicle ahead.' Talk about stating the bleedin' obvious. Now, these appeared in NZ and you just had to keep as left as possible but could continue driving. However on this occasion the 'oversize vehicle' actually seemed to be carrying someone's 4 bedroom house and so took up the entire road. We clung to what little verge there was and looked on in awe. What happens when a road train meets one of these coming the other way, I have no idea!

Road kill. In NZ this consisted mainly of possums; very squashed and lots of them. There isn't too much on the roads here but we did see a good dozen or so kangaroos which was very sad. There is also the odd sheep or goat that has obviously escaped too.

Boredom. The journey to Cobar was particularly tedious; Matt drove the first half and being early in the morning, had my witty intellectual conversation and a decent radio station to keep him occupied. When I took over Matt bogged off into the back and amused himself on his laptop and being in the middle of nowhere, all traces of a radio station disappeared. The only thing left to ease the boredom was to sing (and if you have never heard me sing there is a reason for it). Of course my mind went blank and the only tune I could think of was Tiffany's 'I think we're alone now' which is quite appropriate considering our surroundings at the time. After the 33rd (by this time flailing) rendition I decided to stop. Then I suddenly remembered a song by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, however I didn't know the title or the words but I could sing the tune (although that's slightly debatable). Bordering on hysteria and realising we'd not progressed much further Matt removed his headphones (it was now safe) and rejoined me in the front and we put the world to rights over the course of the next couple of hours. Fortunately the following day when we drove to Dubbo we had Outback Radio to accompany us for the most part.

Bush wave. A practice that Matt in particular became proficient in is the bush wave; it's a matter of lifting the index finger off the steering wheel to acknowledge an oncoming fellow motorist. I, however, failed miserably usually lifting 2 or more fingers and occasionally, in a mild state of panic, an entire hand.