ACROSS THE FLATLAND

Oz 11: pt 163, Ben Hall’s Cave

It took us a while to give up on WI-Fi at the Big 4 Campground in Bathhurst. We got out on the road in the early afternoon. National Parks are scarce on the way to Mildura, Victoria. We picked one that sounded interesting, Weddin NP, which has a campground near Ben Hall’s Cave. Most of the road in was sealed and straight. In fact most of the roads we traveled to get there were very straight. The last couple of kilometers were gravel then dirt, but the washboard was not too bad. When we got there, the only one’s to greet us were a few flies and a couple of kangaroos. (PICTURES)

Ben Hall was one of a gang of Bushrangers (outlaws) who raided supply shipments and once a whole town for two days. They apparently hid out in caves all over this little band of hills. This particular cave may have been one of them. It had a good view of the countryside. The forest was recovering from forest fires in 2006 and drought in 2007. During the night a strong wind came up and then lightning and finally, (as we later heard), the first rain since Christmas.

Cheryl particularly liked the quiet. We did not see another car till we were well-out of the park the next day. She also liked the name and shape of the “Windy Loo” – a unique, very-clean and light toilet.

Cocopara NP: Pt 164

Our next hop was a fairly easy drive thru West Wyalong to Cocopara National Park. The road in, however, was 10 to 17 k of washboard dirt road, not terrible but rough. We camped at the Woolshed Campground which had also been burnt over. Again, we were alone except for some kangaroos and lots of flies. We spent some time catching up on journals, etc. We wore netting hats when we were outside.

Maude: Pt 165

The next day, March 19^th, we stocked up in Griffith., another grape-growing region, and then went south to Hwy 20 along the Murrumbidgee River, one of the longest rivers in Australia. There was a campground on the map near the town of Maude. We found it, near dark, right along the river. Again it was unused and we were alone except for flies, Kookaburras and several other birds. We cleaned up some trash but camped for free.

Wentworth: Pt 166

We were off again early the next day headed for Wentworth in NSW, near Mildura, Victoria. We thought that there was a fruit inspection point at the border to Victoria. Wentworth was reported to have some steam paddleboat history and it is still in NSW. A quick visit to the info center in Wentworth after we set up in a caravan park in NSW dispelled our misconception about the fruit inspection we’d read about in several of our sources + the strange fruit fly warning signs along the highways. The lady there said that the really tough checkpoint is going into South Australia. We decided to spend the next whole day in Mildura, a “foodies” Mecca on the Murray River.

A real bonus was that Richard Williams, the caravan park owner at Curlwaa, helped get the broken bolt out of our spare tire mount in back of the Nissan Patrol and put in a new one. The bad part was that it was a migrant camp during (grape?) harvest and we had some noisy neighbors. There were however some interesting and very old grape vines for raisins in back of the park with a few tasty clusters left on them.