After leaving Canberra at about 4pm on Wednesday afternoon, we drove straight through to Cowra, arriving there at 7pm and had dinner at McDonalds (not something we plan to do too often, but necessary on this occasion). It was cold getting from the car to the building and back again. We actually ate in the car as we wanted to keep going. We had decided to drive through to Molong and had rung ahead that afternoon to book into a powered site. The website had indicated there was a payment per person which added up to about $50 for our family, but when I rang up, I was told it was just a standard fee of $19 for a powered site – we were happy with that. We arrived about 9pm and were set up within 10mins (what we loved about this caravan) and then had Bethany in bed and asleep within 1 min. However, as the heater in the van does not work below 4 degrees C, we couldn’t use it – so Michael came up with the idea of turning on all the gas burners on the stove for a while. We warmed ourselves there while heating up the kids’ sleepy bears in the microwave. Then we pretty much all went to bed. Hannah came to our bed in the middle of the night saying she was cold, and then Bethany came a few minutes later. This was one night when Michael and I didn’t mind having them in bed with us, as 4 bodies squashed together produced good body heat – both Michael and I slept better after they came into our bed. We awoke around 7am and put on the makeshift gas burner “heater” for a while. I made porridge for everyone and then we packed up as quickly as we could so we could get into our warm car which had a heat that worked. The frost on the ground outside was quite thick – it was probably about -4 degrees overnight.
After about 20mins in the car we were able to start taking off beanies and feeling our toes again. Dubbo was about an hour away and we stopped there to do some errands, then continued north along the Mitchell Hwy. About 15 mins out of Dubbo, we heard a thud and Michael saw in the rear view mirror that the keyboard which had been on the roof rack had slid off. We stopped and found that it had landed on the caravan crossbar and hadn’t been damaged – good news – but the bad news was that we then realised the guitar in its case was not there anymore. The netting strap had broken and we weren’t sure how long ago. We decided to drive back to Dubbo to get a new net from Bunnings and to see if we could spot the guitar on the side of the road. We achieved the first, but not the second. Someone, somewhere in this area will find (or may have already found) a guitar which will almost literally have “fallen off the back of a truck”. We will probably end up buying another inexpensive guitar as Michael, Lauren and Sam all play and we had wanted to use it around campfires.
Having had our patience and perseverance tested again, we continued along the Mitchell Hwy through Nyngan and decided we should be able to get to Bourke by 5pm and stay there overnight. About 20km south of Bourke we came upon the town (although it is more like a village) of Byrock. Our Camps Australia guide told us there was a powered site campground there, which was run by the owners of the hotel – the main building in town. We checked it out and found it was only $20 for the night and was in a quiet but ruggedly picturesque setting, so decided to stay there. There was the typical friendly kelpie outside the pub, which Bethany made friends with. Since there was still an hour until sundown, the kids were able to have a bike ride around the flat red dirt, even riding off along a dirt trail for a bit. It was nice to be in warmer climes and we didn’t need to run the heater at all (even though it would have worked this time). We got to bed earlier than the previous night and had a good night’s sleep.
Then I sat at the dining table the next morning while others were still snoozing and looked out the window at the red dirt, enjoying the peaceful location….