Gismo Queen and her King

Tibooburra to Silverton

We must be heading south - it was quite cool all day with a strong breeze, quite different from the warm 25C day we had only a couple of days ago. Up early in Tibooburra this morning, and out of the campsite by 9:30am. Straight to the servo for fuel where it is fair to say the customer service staff work on "outback time". Eventually, we headed down the Silver City Highway where there were bitumen sections and dirt sections. The scenery was also pretty boring so it was a good thing we had our audio book! Neill found us another "cattleyard cafe", after we went past one where three men were working at - Neill's description of that was that "there were no tables available there!" Coffee in front of the van protected from the wind was quite pleasant, until I spotted some wire on the driveway. This prompted me to run the length of the driveway checking for more - good exercise after Jude's homebaked delicacies that was morning tea. On the road again, more of the same. At lunchtime, we arrived at the Packsaddle roadhouse, where we planned to pump our tyres up as that was the end of the dirt. No airhose to speak of, and plenty of other vehicles there so we moved to the other side of the road. Lo and behold, there was another Patriot (same caravan as us) there. So we got talking, and swapped lots of stories and tips. Theirs was from last December so not much older than ours. In the meantime, the compressor came out and the tyre pressures went up for the first time in nearly 3 weeks. After lunch, we were able to travel a bit more quickly but the wind was strongly buffeting the van so it wasn't all easy. Not to mention the roadkill obstructing the road, the eagles swooping to eat that, the emus, kanagaroos, cattle, sheep and goats running across the road. And then throw in 14km of roadworks so it was actually pretty slow going. We didn't get into Broken Hill until after 4pm and had a couple of chores to do before we headed out to Silverton. So it was nearly dark by the time we got here, and in the fading light, we had to quickly choose a campsite. It was too cold and windy for a fire so we had drinks and nibbles, and then dinner, in Cafe Bushtracker.

posted by Tracey @ 6:37 pm