At 09:25 we waited for the post shop to open, whose hours of trade are 09:00 to 17:00 weekdays, and it struck me that although we had crossed the stateline back into New South Wales, perhaps we hadn't automatically lost our half hour that we gained when we travelled into South Australia. Ian was adamant that we had and so we relied on the clock tower to tell us the time. It was 08:55. Oops. Another 12 hours spent on the wrong time!
We sent a couple of items to friends in England, refuelled, and were back on the road to Dubbo by 09:30. The road was long. The road was straight. The road was dry. Again the sides of the road were decorated with red dirt and gum trees. We passed countless floodways and floodplains either side of the road and it's impossible to imagine the area flooded, or with any water for that matter. The flood indicators reach 1 metre but surely it doesn't get that high?
We had lunch in a typical roadhouse in Emmdale, 160 kilometres shy of Cobar, and I wondered how anyone could live and function on a daily basis in such intense heat in the middle of nowhere. We refuelled for the second time in Wilcannia and in Cobar we had an ice-cream and refuelled for the third time today. I resigned as driver for the day in Cobar.
Dubbo received us at 18:30. It was stinking hot too and as I now write this journal at 23:00 at night we are literally dripping with perspiration, unable to get comfortable. We saw cattle, sheep, goats and emus at the roadside today and even had to stop for a cow to cross the road. The big, wide open roads with stock wandering, the long, straight but undulating roads with their evidence of subsidence remind us of our journey through Africa, with the debilitating heat and vast areas of nothing.
At the YHA we made up our room and unpacked the car to find that our door lock was broken. 30 minutes and a very disjointed conversation later we had a new lock fitted on the door and made the 1 kilometre walk into town for some dinner. The guy who fixed the door lock managed to shut us inside the room by taking the handle off the inside and closing the door, the exterior handle falling to the floor outside. A memory of Dad 'fixing' the utility room door, then calling for help having trapped himself inside, sprang back into my mind...
We travelled an incredible 759 kilometres today from Broken Hill to Dubbo.
Walking back to the hostel was hot, there's just no wind here, no relief even 'though the sun has long settled for the day. It's just so damn hot!
Copyright 2003 Helen Fuller. All rights reserved.