We got up early and restocked on groceries before heading to Wentworth, New South Wales (about half an hour away). We mustered enough energy to drive down the road to pick up takeaway pizzas and bring them home, and were pretty much unconscious once they'd been eaten. We were so exhausted from the night before that as soon as we'd found a motel to check in to we were pretty much straight into our beds reading and using our computers, taking showers and washing our dishes from the night before (there was no running water in the campsite). We drove north-west, stopping in Kerang for brunch and reaching Mildura by about 4pm. It was so quiet that when a crow flew past I heard every beat of its wings like it was the size of a hippogriff. We boiled some water and had some hot chocolate and coffee. Well, I did Warrior 3 for about two seconds, and Lachy did a few push-ups. I thought we'd be up with the dawn but it was my phone alarm that woke us at 7am, and Lachy and I hiked up to the top of the stone-hill again to see the sun rising and do a bit of yoga. We managed to arrange the blankets and all three of us into the two-man tent in such a way that we weren't too cold and uncomfortable and (amazingly) we slept. A beautiful place to start reading a book as adventurous as that! It's amazing what you find delicious when you are out camping! We lay around, chatted and roasted marshmallows in the dark, and I started reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed with my headtorch. Potatoes, carrots, mushrooms and pasta all boiled together with stock cubes, and served with bread. In the meantime we set to cooking ourselves a one-pot dinner with the groceries we'd bought at Bendigo on the way in. We hadn't had the forethought to pack camping mats so we unloaded all our blankets and sleeping bags into the tent to deal with later. We cleared away twigs and stones and pitched our tent in the campsite. They turned out to be day visitors who jumped into the car and drove off almost as soon as we'd arrived. We hadn't seen another car in so long it was a bit of a shock to find someone else parked there. We never actually saw the cemetery, but we did startle a mob of kangaroos as we drove into Terrick Terrick National Park. Our tarmac road turned into a dirt one and we then followed a road sign ominously announcing 'CEMETERY' to our campground. I don't know what else I was expecting but I'd been so busy handing in assignments etc that I hadn't even considered where we were actually going to sleep once we hit the road. It took me a little while to get used to the idea of actually camping because I thought we'd brought the tent as an emergency backup. He called up Parks Victoria as the webpage suggested and they had never even heard of this park. In the end no decision was made until I was driving us down one of the longest, straightest, emptiest roads of my life and Lachy found a national park with a campsite not too far away. We knew we'd need to be in Mildura by the end of Day Two to get out to the sanctuary early the next morning, so we were aiming to get about halfway. We had a couple of pastries each from Hot & Crusty, pulled out our brand new printed and bound road map (foreseeing a lack of phone signal in our futures) and tried to decide where we were aiming to be by nightfall. We had only driven as far north as Castlemaine (the 'Maine) by lunchtime and we'd already stopped at a market for donuts. We set off on a Saturday morning, not exactly early after breakfast with friends, general slow-going accompanying my hangover, and loading up one car only to move everything over into another (a 4WD we were fortunate enough to be able to borrow). We were also joined by our good friend Patrick who also wanted to see more of his homeland. That became the one fixed point for our five-day road trip. Looking at Google Maps in the vague direction we were considering, we recognised one of the place names as being near a wildlife sanctuary we wanted to visit, just over the NSW border. We decided to go in search of some desert. We've done a few forays into the mountains and along the coast, but never actually considered driving in before. A couple of months ago Lachy suggested we take a road trip, just drive inwards and take a look at the outback.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |