We had a long drive ahead of us, so we opted for the continental brekky at the hotel. Not vet ore continental but reminded me of my childhood – filter coffee, cereal, toast and two fruits. I passed on the cereal. This let us get on the road fairly early and in the post dawn quiet, there were still a lot of wildlife around. We saw a bunch of teenage emus running around, getting into mischief as we headed back down the highway to Wilcannia. Somewhere just before Wilcannia, we started to have transmission issues.

We filled up at the local service station come takeaway which could only let one person into the tiny shop at a time because of COVID rules. A barefooted hippy chick and her son were sitting down outside eating some takeaway and a group of tradies were waiting for food. The shop for the service station was basically a local greasy. It seemed pretty popular. Most of the rest of Wilcannia was deserted and there were quire a few boarded up buildings. Before we left, we continued on our trail of works by E.L.K. We found the work in the laneway in Broken Hill. We found the couch on the way to Menindee Lakes. But we couldn’t, as hard as we tried find the work on the bridge at Wilcannia.

The road between Wilcannia and Cobar is long, mostly straight and mostly devoid of any sign of life. There’s a sign on the highway just outside of Wilcannia that warns you to be wary of kangaroos on the 256-kilometre drive to Cobar. I didn’t see any. About fifty kilometres in, I did start to see a lot of feral goats though. They were everywhere. As we drove across what were essentially dusty and bare plains, covered with the low shrubby vegetation we had become akin to seeing for the past few days, the occasional tree started to appear and then there started to be groves of them. But they were still scrubby and really short. While gum trees on the coastal rim of Australia, and in the plains above the escarpment would have no trouble providing protection for a giraffe, the trees this far west would be lucky to make it to the top of a giraffe’s leg. They did, however provide plenty of shelter for the feral goats.

There is a town listed on the may about halfway between Wilcannia and Cobar. In reality, Ellerston is probably more of a locality than a town. Essentially a blink or you’ll miss it roadhouse. A rest stop for the trucks that serve the west of NSW. For most of our journey, we barely saw another soul on the road. It does make you wonder just what will happen out here when the world moves to electric vehicles. Firstly, even a Tesla would have trouble making it between rest stops out here. And even when we do move to charging the car or truck at home before we venture out for 1000kms, in some of these places the service stations and roadhouses attached to them are the most important place in town.  You do wonder the impact the pandemic has on them.

Eventually after a couple of hours driving, we arrived at Cobar. A pretty standard western NSW country town. Parts of the main street were over 100 years old and other parts, like the building that housed the local IGA were fibro constructions – probably post war, with little style. We found a really old school Hot Bake bakery with a toastie menu just off the main street and decided it was as good a place as any to grab some lunch. Maybe we have just gotten too fussy, but it was a bit lacklustre in the end. The taotie was pretty bog standard (why don’t cafes ever put butter on the outside of a ham and cheese toastie?)and the apple pie wasn’t a standout. Edible but nothing to get excited about. (All along the watchtower – Neil Young – one of Dylan’s mater works, Neil Young definitely gives this tune its true credence. The fact that such a mater songwriter in his own right would record it, is a testament to the respect for Dylan’s song writing prowess).

From Cobar it was onwards to Nyngan, home of the Big Bogan, which of course I had to find. Nyngan straddles both the Bogan River and the main train line west from Sydney so it was quite convoluted to ger from the service station on the way out of town back to the Big Bogan, but we made it, dodgy transmission notwithstanding.  There aren’t a lot of big things this far west (and I don’t envisage taking this trip again anytime soon, so it was important to add a pic to my Big things collection. Alas no accompanying gift shop though so no tacky souvenirs to immortalise my visit.

Late in the afternoon we arrived in Dubbo. At the juncture of two main highways running east west and north- south, Dubbo is where you leave the outback behind. Where sleepy little country towns transition to a virtual metropolis. It was the most people and traffic we had see since leaving Canberra a week before. There were roundabouts, traffic lights, major chain stores, massive warehouses and practically every hardware or automotive specialist you could find. We drove past double story retail stores, lush golf courses and in traffic that was two lanes and even sometimes three, each way. After 650 kilometres, as dusk was falling, we made it to our accommodation, successfully collecting our keys from the Dropbox. We were staying at Western Plains Zoo Savannah cabins. The cabins were an upscale version of what you find in an upmarket caravan park – replete with Webber barbecues on the deck. They have two queen size beds and two bathrooms and while they look out on an area of the zoo with Australian wildlife, it is quite a nice place to stay. I looked at the lodge style accommodation that looks out over the African Savannah but that was extremely expensive. And sold out as well. On the last leg home and with a transmission that didn’t respond well to being off for only a short period of time, the idea of going out and grabbing stuff to cook on the barbecue wasn’t all that appealing so we checked trip advisor for Dubbo’s finest restaurants.

And once again, it didn’t let us down. The Indian Restobar was a bit of a hark back to restaurants of the 80s with a bar on site. It was huge and we had to wait a short while before we got a table but when we sat down and surveyed the menu, we didn’t hold back. The best thing about Indian is the extras and the Restobar delivered this in spades with an entrée silver platter with samosas, chicken 65 (smoky lemon chicken), lamb tandoor , and a pakora prawn and a side platter with pappadams, raita, mango chutney and lime pickle with all that we didn’t really need main dishes but we had them anyway – butter chicken and vege korma with garlic naan and saffron rice, washed down with some beers. Needles to say there was quite a lot of leftover food. We headed back to the cabin. The storm we left in White Cliffs had followed us, but we were far too tired to chase it.