Towards Menindee

A leisurely start this morning on our way south along the Pacific Highway. We sat comfortably at 100 km/h for most of our trip before a brief stop in Johns River for a light lunch and coffee.

More vans were heading north than the direction we were taking, which of course, is understandable as they are all escaping the cooler weather.

After Hexam, we joined John Renshaw Drive before taking the Hunter Expressway to Jerry's Plains Recreation Reserve. It's one of our favourite stopovers whenever driving along the Golden Highway, and we were surprised that there were only three vans here for the evening.

Thank goodness for our diesel heater, as it kept us warm before retiring for the evening and again the following morning with the internal temperature showing just seven degrees.

Our second night was spent at Bob Christensen Reserve just outside Warren, and yet again, it's another of our favourites. It's a vast area with absolutely no facilities. We stopped briefly in town to top up one of our tanks before heading towards Nyngan, where we refuelled at 224.9 Cpl. 

We joined the Barrier Highway heading west towards Cobar, where we stopped for lunch and topped up our Adblue. Our camp tonight was at Bulla Park rest area 119 km from Cobar. It's a large area, and we could camp about 200 metres from the road, although the trucks stopped quite early, so we enjoyed a peaceful evening.

Another lateish start with just 140 km to Wilcannia, where we refuelled again at 224.9 Cpl. We checked road conditions to find out that the western side of the Darling River was open to traffic with just one water hazard across the road to contend with. The eastern road side of the Darling was closed from Bourke to Menindee.

Our next three nights were spent camped right on the Darling River at Nelia Gaari Station 90 km south of Wilcannia. Your $20 per couple per night gets you hot showers, toilets and absolute river frontage.

It was wonderful to see the river so full and flowing as on our previous visits along the Darling River there have just been pools of water here and there.

Our next three nights were spent camped beside Lake Pamamaroo just outside Menindee and here again, it was lovely to see that the lakes surrounding Menindee are all full again after many years of being bone dry.

The sunsets here are always very spectacular and it's wonderful to see just how amazing nature really is.