Even though it was windy and threatening to rain last night, there wasn’t a lot of rain overnight and the camper was dry this morning. At least the temperature dropped a lot! It was 28 degrees when we went to bed last night, but thankfully it had cooled to 22 degrees this morning. It was still quite windy, though.
Nathan and Toby rode their bikes all over the park where we were camping, and as expected Nathan got a flat tyre. There are spikey grass seeds everywhere that spike your feet and punch holes in bike tyres. I’m just surprised it took so long for Nathan to get a flat! We weren’t prepared with any bicycle tools, so we had to get some in Broken Hill.
We packed up the camper and drove to Broken Hill, stopping to have a look at an old railway station on the way. The train that was at the campsite was the one that ran on the line and, interestingly, the train line was built to the border by the South Australian government, but NSW didn’t allow them to build in NSW. It took the creation of the Silverton Tramway Company to create a group and raise funds through shares before the train line was built (the NSW government obviously didn’t mind a private company building the train line). Until the line was built supplies were brought from South Australia by bullock teams!
In Broken Hill I went into the bike shop and bought a new inner tube (the last 18-inch one he had), a bicycle repair kit and a bike pump. The guy in the shop even gave me some thick inner tubes that had been used so we could cut them up to line the tyre and reduce the risk of the new inner tube being stuck with spiky seeds. I had forgotten that little trick because I hadn’t used it for a long time. I left the shop with all these goodies, but returned on the way out of town to get tyre levers. We took the boys back to the park with the flying fox in it before starting the drive to Menindee.
Our lunch stop was just off the road near a dry river bed, but it had the only trees we had seen for miles. It was cooler than the last few days, but shade was still nice. We stopped and pulled out the trailer kitchen and made sandwiches. We then drove on to Menindee, a little town of around 900 people. We stopped for some bread and milk at the local (small) supermarket and again at the tourist information centre.
We decided to go to Kinchenga National Park to camp for the night. It wasn’t far out of Menindee and on the banks of the Darling River. Camping in the park is not cheap. The day use fee is $7 per vehicle per day, and the camping is an additional $5 per adult and $3 per child on top of that, though kids under 5 were free. We decided to stay for two nights.
We found a nice looking campsite on the bank of the Darling River and set up the camper. Andrew set up a wire antenna in the trees and I cooked a marinated roast beef dinner, since we had plenty of time to cook dinner tonight. We saw an emu with 4 babies walking not far from where we were camped, a few kangaroos in the distance, and loads of birds including rainbow beeaters. Andrew broke a screw while setting up the camper trailer, so we are hoping we can work out how to get the trailer down again, even if we can’t get it up again.
The old Silverton railway station
Toby trying the flying fox
Dry riverbed lunch spot
Woolshed at Kinchenga National Park
Roast dinner
