On the Road Again

The plan was to get an early start beat the rush hour and get to Wyperfeld Nation park early in the afternoon. Fortunately we don't have a strict itinerary, because after hooking up the trailer on Sunday the day prior to our departure, I discovered that the trailer brakes were not working.  So instead of an early start it was an early visit to the auto electrician.  We did get away and still managed to arrive at Wyperfeld before dark.

sunset at Wyperfeld NP

I had never been to Wyperfeld before.  It is a large park in the Mallee and  has sandy soil and a range of vegetation.  It contains seasonal  lakes and swamps and abounds with bird life.  It would be worth spending a couple of weeks here and the surrounding parks.

Our next destination was Mungo National Park in NSW.  This was another long drive.  We stayed here for a couple of days.  We were here previously in March 2012 and the weather was hot.  It was much more pleasant in the cooler days of May.  Mungo contains some fantastic history, the site of mega fauna fossils  40,000 year old aboriginal remains and a rich pastoral history.  The size of the dry lake system is amazing.

Cath at Woolshed Kinchega NP

We traveled from Mungo to Menindee and camped in the Kinchega National Park  on the Darling river for a couple of nights.  Very relaxing.  Kinchega was a former sheep station and the old wool shed and some other old buildings are still standing.  This area was flooded in 2011 and parts of the park infrastructure are still being repaired.  At our camp site you could see the flood marks on the trees at about 2.5 meters.

 A couple of hundred Km's up the road is Broken Hill, the last city we will visit until we get to Mt Isa.  It is an interesting city with a rich history.  We visited the sculpture park set on a hilltop 25 Km out of town.  Th sculptures are pretty amazing as is the view.  We also visited the former bustling town of Silverton, now a few ruins and a pub.  At the museum in this town were extracts from newspapers of 1915 detailing the attack on the picnic train.  The train was travelling form Broken Hill to Silverton with 1200 passengers in open carriages when it was ambushed by 2 Turks in an ice cream cart bearing the Ottoman Flag .  The picnic was cancelled and all fares were refunded.  There was lots more to see in and around BH but I was keen to get back on the road again.

Feral Goats at Mutawintji

130 Km to the NE is Mutawintji National Park.  This park is a significant aboriginal site and the Historic precinct is accessible only with a guide.  We missed the tour the day we arrived but were lucky and joined an unscheduled tour a couple of days later.  The Historic precinct has some fantastic example of 10,000 year old etching.  Much better, bigger and more than we saw in the NT and WA last year.  The park also has some nice gorge walks.  there are numerous kangaroos, euros and emus.  There are also thousands of feral goats.  The eradication program doesn't seem to be working and they are doing a lot of damage.

It is about 300 Km down unsealed roads to Tibooburra which is on the edge of the Sturt National Park. It's probably the biggest town we will strike for a while with 2 pubs, a shop, a roadhouse and a police station.  One of the pubs "the family Hotel" is famous for Clifton Pugh murals on the bar wall.  We took a side trip back to to Milparinka a former prosperous town now a collection of 4 restored buildings and a boarded up pub.  Nearby is Depot Glen  the base of explorer Sturt for a number of months.  We also walked to the Sturt cairn, a stone cairn constructed by Sturts men on top of mount Poole.  The 360 degree views were terrific.

Tomorrow we move on.

Some more photos

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