Bound for South Australia

Just 20 km after leaving Warren we joined the Mitchell Highway at Nevertire, where they are building the largest solar array beside the Mitchell Highway. There must be upwards of one hundred people working on this project, judging by the number of cars parked there.

We refuelled in Nyngan at $1.49.7 after doing 976 km with still another 60 litres left in the tank. Also purchased some tech screws to replace the rivets that had come adrift on the strap attaching our grey water tank tap to the chassis of the van.

From here we joined the Barrier Highway as we continued further west. We stopped briefly just near the Florida Rest Area, to gather some disused wooden railway sleepers lying beside the railway track. They make the most amazing coals so we carved up some with the chainsaw.

Our decision before leaving home was to ensure we were parked up for the evening by about lunchtime or soon thereafter each day. And today was no different with just 273 km in total.

Our drive took us further west towards Cobar, where we stopped briefly just to stretch the legs before continuing for another 63 km to spend the evening camped at the Meadow Glen Rest Area. It's a large area and being the first to arrive, we were able to get the best position away from the highway and behind some trees.

By 5:30 another seven vans had turned up to spend the evening, and the road noise from passing trucks also dropped off just after dark.

Another shortish days drive again today for our fifth day on the road, of just 196 km to spend the night camped at the Victory caravan park in Wilcannia, where powered sites are just $25 or $15 for unpowered. It's a very popular park with over fifteen vans spending the night here.

So sad to see the level of water currently in the Darling River just behind the caravan park.

We have previously stayed at Warrawong on the Darling but I find their fees of $28 for an unpowered site to be a rather excessive, especially when we use all our own 0nboard
facilities. 
We could have stayed at the rest area 15 km west of here, but its quite small and very close to the highway, and I would imagine quite noisy with trucks passing throughout the night. 

There has been quite a lot of bad publicity circulating about spending time in Wilcannia but from our experience last night and on recent occasions I think this criticism is unjustified. 

Two of the lovely stone buildings in town.

Before leaving we refuelled at the BP service station that's located in one of the back streets in town. It's normally fifteen cents a litre cheaper than the Liberty station located on the highway in the centre of town.  

We were now on our way towards Broken Hill. From here the only excitement for us was where the road climbs over the Thackaringa Hills. Of course, there are no passing lanes here, but then there's not much traffic to contend with either.

It wasn't long after that until we crossed the border into South Australia. Cockburn is located almost right on the border and is only just within South Australia. In its heyday, in the late 1890s the population of the town grew to over 2000 people but today there are just 25 living here. This once busy railway town was the location where locomotives and crews would change.

The remainder of our drive today was quite boring and featureless apart from the lovely railway station at Manahill. 

The countryside consists of mainly saltbush with the occasional trees lining some of the dry creeks. 

For our whole drive today we have battled severe north westerly winds since leaving Wilcannia. The weather bureau had predicted winds of 37 kph with gusts reaching 51 kph and we can attest to that. 

As we approached Peterborough the heavens opened up and with it the temperature dropped to just 6 degrees at 3 pm.