FORTYNINETH DAY – THURSDAY 26TH AUGUST
We woke up to a very windy cold morning, but dry. It is cloudy so not quite sure which road we should take – the one back to Broken Hill and down the main road or on to Pooncarie which is 123kms of dirt road. We went into the township of Menindee to find out what the weather report was so we could make a choice. There was a note on the info centre window about the road conditions and weather report and it said cloudy but fine, all roads were open. We then went to the Police Station to check and they had a board which said all roads open, cloudy and fine. So we thought we would take the risk and go the dirt road way. We travelled along the pretty good dirt road however it was a bit windy and we were a bit slow in sections. we saw emus and sheep and horses along the way. Half way along the dirt road, as we entered into a new council, we came to a section of bitumen road which ran for a few kms, which was a nice interlude from dirt. We then hit the dirt road again. A few travellers passed us along the way. About 30 kms north of Pooncarie which was our destination for the day, it started to spit. We had to keep going and so we just hoped it wouldn’t get any worse. It got worse! The rains came and up ahead we could see that the 4WD had had some ‘fun’ on the dirt road. In wasn’t too bad, we thought, we were able to go along without too much difficulty. But, we came upon some slippery patches and that was something else! One section was so slippery Graeme used all his efforts to keep us on the road and upright. We slipped back and forth and I think at one point I actually screamed – thinking we might tip over – Yes! It was that bad! We got through that and there were a couple of other slippery areas until we reached Pooncarie and the bitumen road. We stopped and took stock of ourselves and the van. The bikes on the back collected a lot of mud and the sides of the van were red with mud – but we had made it and so did the contents of the van although some things were not where they were originally! We checked out the campsite we were going to stay at but it was pretty muddy beside the Darling River and so we were not sure about that. We went into the town and stopped at a craft/cafe shop were we discovered that most of the travellers that had past us were all there too. One lot were happy to see that we made it as they had trouble as well as did many of them. We had hot drinks and toasted sandwiches. Checked out the crafts of wooded carved objects, photos and paintings of the area. the owner of the cafe was a character and asked where we were heading. We said we were thinking of staying in Pooncarie and suggested we keep going considering the weather has made the campground bad. So we decided to continue on to Wentworth. We drove through more rain and sunshine and rain and sunshine and were happy we had got off the dirt road before the heavy rain came. We arrived in Wentworth and went to info centre where we found out that that road had now been closed! We found out about some free camping along the Murray River so off we went and found ourselves a lovely spot in amongst the gum trees overlooking the river. Later in the day it became clear and sunny but still windy. It was nice to just chill out after the morning we had. This was a good spot to camp. We collected some firewood and Graeme made a lovely roaring hot fire on which we cooked our vegies once again. I love vegies cooked on the fire – it’s so easy just to wrap them up in foil and plonk them in the coals – done. We also had marshmallows. Went to bed at 9 pm.