Today we got going quickly since we wanted to catch the 8:30 am discovery tour and we were supposed to be at the Visitor Centre half an hour before the tour. We were the only ones on the tour, which was good because the kids weren’t always quiet. We went back to the Walls of China lookout that we went to last night, but we were able to walk around the sand dunes and formations with the guide, who’s name was Robert. Robert showed us old middens, bones that were both in the ground and sitting on top, and he talked about the aboriginal culture a lot.

After the tour we started driving around the Mungo Drive loop which took us past several points of interest. Red Top Lookout was our first stop where we saw more of the eroded formations and Mungo Lake (it has been dry for 17,000 years). We were all hungry for lunch, so we bypassed Rosewood Rest and Mallee Stop and headed for Belah Camp. The mallee scrub was quite a different landscape to the low shrubs of the dry lake.

We found a shady spot at Belah Camp for lunch. It was bushier than the main camp where we set up our camper, and there was a toilet with water. I have been impressed with the toilets at the park which have all had a tank to collect rainwater that could be used for hand washing.

After lunch we stopped at Round Tank where there is a feral goat trap. They come to the water to drink and are unable to get out of the fence surrounding the dam once they are inside. They are then sold and the money raised supplements the funds of the park.

Our next stop was at Vigars Well which was used as a watering spot years ago. Just behind the water were sand dunes which were incredible to walk on. We sat on top of a dune and built sand castles….you just couldn’t find a better sand pit to play in! Unfortunately it was a bit windy, and Toby was pretty tired, so we didn’t spent as long there as we would have liked to.

The last stop before we got back to the visitors centre was another old woolshed. Then we went back to our campsite and started cooking our marinaded flat chicken and roast veggies for our dinner. Afterwards we went again to the visitors centre for showers and then it was back for bed. It was another beautiful evening, and although there were plenty of flies around during the day, there didn’t seem to be many insects at night. I also managed to snap a few Major Mitchell cockatoos as well before it got dark.

A formation in the Walls of China

Bone artifacts

Climbing a sand dune

At Red Top Lookout

Baked Emu footprint

Feral goat trap

Nathan with emu on the sand dunes

We made it!

A great sand pit!

We did a bit of packing up last night so there was less to do this morning. Our plan was to get going as early as possible and pack up the camper, go for a shower at the shearers quarters and then head into Menindee for a few supplies before heading south towards Mungo National Park. We managed to do all those things, but we certainly didn’t set out as early as we had wanted. Nathan decided to sleep in, and sleep in, and sleep in!

It was lovely to have a shower, and Andrew filled up the water tank on our camper as it had run dry since it was last filled at Broken Hill. In Menindee we bought some milk, bread and locally grown apricots. We also topped up the car with diesel.

The road to Pooncarie was mostly dirt, though funnily enough there were a few kilometres of bitumen when we crossed into Wellington shire…just enough to make us think we’d left the dirt road behind before hitting more dirt. We saw one snake, several lizards, kangaroos, emus and stock on or beside the road on the drive.

We had lunch in Pooncarie where there was some lovely green grass and a playground for the kids. Then we kept driving, this time on bitumen for a while, until we got to Top Hut Road, the road into Mungo National Park. It was dirt and was open, so on we went.

We arrived at Mungo National Park at around 3 pm and decided to stay for two nights. It was the same deal as Kinchega National Park, there was a $7 per day park entry fee and an additional $10 per night for camping ($5 per adult, kids under 5 were free). There are toilets, rubbish bins and water at the campsite and not far away at the visitors centre are showers.

I cooked pasta for dinner, though it was hard work to get anything to cook due to the wind and it took a lot longer to get the meal organised than anticipated. While we were washing up the kids went for a ride and didn’t come back, so I sent Andrew off to find them and he didn’t come back. I ended up taking the car to go and find them, and there they were chatting to some people half the campsite away. I was told my boys were very sociable! Yes, I know Nathan is, perhaps not so much Toby.

We finally got everything packed away and we drove to the Walls of China lookout in time to see the sun set. It really is a beautiful spot. On the way we saw some Major Mitchell cockatoos..the first I have ever seen in the wild. It became my mission to photograph some before we leave Mungo National Park.

Lizard on the road

Toby asleep in the car still clutching his drawing things

Advertising the local garage

Our road to Mungo National Park is open!

At Walls of China lookout

Boardwalk to lookout

Walls of China at sunset

Kangaroo and Emu footprints

Today was a lovely, sunny day which got up to around 27 degrees C. After breakfast Nathan, Toby and I went for a walk along the road to photograph some animal footprints that Nathan and I saw last night but we didn’t have a camera with us. The road was a lot drier than it had been yesterday, although it was still a bit soft in parts. We had a lot of fun trying to work out what animals the tracks came from.

On our way back we met up with Andrew who had finished the things he was doing and had decided to walk in the direction we had gone in. We turned around and walked a bit further until it was time for lunch and we went back to the camper.

After lunch we thought it was time to test out the road, so we drove to the woolshed. We had to pay for another day and another night of camping in the park, and we tried to call to find out if the road south was open or likely to be open tomorrow. We chatted to a park ranger who gave us some numbers to try tomorrow, but he said the road was still shut. Then we explored the old woolshed, explaining to Nathan and Toby what a shearing shed was all about. The two boys then acted out being sheep and shearers…it was so funny! They did it over and over again, taking turns in who was the sheep and who the shearer.

We went for a drive around the park to have a look at the lakes, but the picnic area we went to wasn’t really as nice as we thought it would be, and the lake was inaccessible. The lake was really lovely though, and there were some accessible places along the road.

We drove back to our campsite via the old homestead site where there was little more than some old rubble lying around and a few information boards to tell us what used to be there. It certainly was an interesting place before it became a National Park!

Back at our campsite and I discovered that the road we want to drive on is now open, so we are hoping for an early start tomorrow. The plan at the moment is to pack up the camper, drive to the woolshed for showers and then head south (assuming the road is still open).

Emu footprints

kangaroo footprints

Woolshed

Toby the shearer

Nathan the shearer

Wool sorting table and press

Sheep holding yards

Star trail

It rained half the night and most of the morning. The rain turned the ground into a sticky mucky mess that caked to the bottom of your shoes and was really slippery. It was quite obvious that our plans to explore the park today were not going to happen as there was no way we were going to try to drive the car out. Even if we made it out, we would have wheels caked in mud and would probably destroy the dry-weather-road-only road in the process. Instead we had a relatively relaxing day….relatively, because it’s never really quiet with two small boys and their boundless energy being cooped up in a tent. Still, we spent a lot of time photographing birds, something that neither Andrew nor I have done for a long time.

In the afternoon the sun finally came out and the ground started to dry out. When the boys could no longer stand being cooped up the gumboots were put on and the bikes made an appearance. It wasn’t long, however, before the bike tyres were caked with mud and could not be walked, let alone ridden. Andrew also managed to fix the broken screw that had us worried we wouldn’t be able to get the camper up again if we did manage to get it down. It took a hammer, screwdriver and brute force!

We had sausages, steak and potatoes cooked over the fire for dinner, with boiled beans and carrots as well. The kids were excited about having a fire because we could have toasted marshmellows which they both adore. Well, I think it’s more that they love the marshmellows making an appearance, because they love to eat them, toasted or not!

Andrew had a go at making some star trail photographs last night, and just as we were packing up to go to bed we had a little frog jump through our campsite. I took a couple of photographs and probably blinded the poor thing with my flash. It was very pretty though.

I think our plan now is to stay one more day at Kinchenga National Park and see if our road south is open on Friday. If it isn’t then we will have to drive home the way we came, via Broken Hill.

Nathan couldn’t ride his bike….he could barely walk it for all the mud on his wheels

Toby’s mud encrusted bike tyre

Activities for children where it’s too muddy to ride or walk much

Sunset

Our frog visitor

Menindee to Pooncarie: closed. 🙁

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

Sunrise view from our tent site

It was a hot and windy night lastnight. The temperature didn’t drop below 29 degrees and the wind was really strong. None of us slept well.

We started the day slowly, with Toby insisting on visiting the steam train engine in the park twice before anyone else got out of bed. He just loves the steam train, and spends most of his time at the engine. When we finally got moving we went past Silverton to a lookout, and from there to a reservoir. Then it was back to Silverton to have a look around. The movies Mad Max and Mad Max 2 were made here, and there are a couple of vehicles there that were in the movies.

We went back to the campsite for lunch and then headed into Broken Hill. There are a large number of attractions and things to do in Broken Hill, but with our limited time we chose to go to the Royal Flying Doctors and go on their tour. We were shown the control room where people took calls and had all the information they needed at their fingertips, and then we were taken to the hanger where we saw two aeroplanes, one that was being worked on.

We took the kids back to the playground with the flying fox for a while and then went to the Living Desert Reserve to look at the sculptures which were quite spectacular. With it being nearly dinner time and the kids tired and hungry, we decided not to take the walking track to the sculptures but drove up instead. Toby fell asleep in the car on the way back, and didn’t want to wake up when we got to the campsite, so we let him sleep, but he missed out on his dinner!

Toby at the steam train at the campsite

Dry river bed near our campsite

Reservoir

Car from Mad Max

Buggy from Mad Max

Royal Flying Doctor Service

Flying doctors hanger

And photos from the sculptures at the Living Desert Reserve: