Heading East : World Cup 2018 Russia

Heading East : World Cup 2018 Russia

As we had spent quite a bit of time in Uluru, Coober Pedy & Port Augusta, and we wanted to have a couple of nights in the Blue Mountains before hitting Sydney and the airport, we now has a few days where we needed to get some distance under our belt. Instead of heading further south to Adelaide, Melbourne and back up to Sydney, we wanted to continue our flirtation with the dusty desert and had planned a route heading almost due east from Port Augusta, skirting along the edge of the boarder of civilization and the vast empty outback for a few more days.  

Our first target overnight stop was in a historic mining town called Broken Hill some 400kms east of Port Augusta, so we packed up early, well early for us, and hit the road. Leaving town we passed many farms and orchards lining the road as we crossed over the foothills of the Flinders Ranges and beyond. Soon though the neatly arranged crops and fields gave way to dusty scrublands and the all-too-familiar red earth that we had been seeing ever since we set off from Alice Springs, and it wasn’t long before we felt like we were back in the outback. Long days at the wheel can be fun regardless of how repetitive they may seem, and Fiona & I enjoyed the ever-moving scenery, accompanied by a rotating selection of our favourite podcasts, (Judge John Hodgman & ‘My Dad Wrote a Porno), interspaced with long talks about life, the universe, and everything.

We arrive into Broken Hill in the mid-afternoon and found somewhere for a late lunch before heading to my favoured campground to see if we could get a spot for the night, and even though they were extremely busy, we managed to get a powered site for the night and settle in. I can honestly say that even though this small mining town on the frontier between the working farmlands of the coastal hinterland and the barren wastes of the outback, may have seemed a bit quiet, it had a lot going for it, and this was going to be one of the many places we had visited that I wish we could have spent longer in. We had seen that there was a desert sculpture park on the outskirts of the city and we resolved to rise early, leave the campground and visit the park on our way out of town, and have breakfast on the road. We managed to rise early and get on the road, but we had not factored in that the warmth of the sun had yet to kick in as we stood on a breezy hilltop looking at both the sculpture and the impressive vistas, demonstrably freezing our arses off. Even the local Kangaroo population were too cold to hop away from us, so apart from our new marsupial friends we spent an enjoyable 20 minutes alone before we retreated to the van to warm up.

We had a lot of ground to cover to get to Cobar some 460kms further west and we settled in for another 5 hours drive, but at least we have a cooked breakfast of a bacon & egg sandwich to look forward to at our first stop of the day. The kilometres seemed to pass effortlessly in our unstoppable Mercedes Sprinter camper, which considering its limited space was surprisingly comfortable and enjoyable to spend time in, and it was as reliable as we have come to expect of superior German engineering. It was another afternoon of finding a campsite and then making ourselves at home for the evening. We really didn’t see much of Cobar which is a bit of a shame, but you never know when we might come back this way. We made the most of an early start and finally started heading back to some semblance of civilisation, towards the city metropolis of Dubbo via the interestingly named Boganshire...! I honestly thought that the word ‘Bogan’ was a derogatory name that others used to label Australians, but it seems to be an actual place,... Who knew..?

The ride to Dubbo was a shorter one so we had some time to spend an afternoon in the city of only 39,000 people, with the campground was just a short walk to the centre of the city and was as comfortable and relaxed as any of the places we had stayed in before, except this time with actual green grass.  We found a small Vietnamese restaurant for a spot of lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon exploring the Old Gaol complex which was remarkably well preserved, not surprising as it was in use until 1966...! We took a slow saunter back to the van, before planning for our last few nights in the campervan and our trip to the Blue Mountains.