Day 3 Moruya to Renmark

So it’s like this. I’m sitting on my folding squatters chair right beside the Murray River at a little bush campsite near Renmark. We are in the middle of a national park and camped at the waters edge. The trees are reflected in the water, and there are little ripples where insects, or is it fish, break the surface. The sun is about to slide below the horizon. There are a dozens birds calling, of course the loudest being a crow, the sound of the outback.

Not a human sound, except for a couple of tinnies that have puttered past, and a ute with some young blokes out hunting. A small plane flies overhead and fades away into the distance. A fish plops up out of the water and back again. The sunset is laying down pools of pink and gold.

We are two days into our journey and we are already far away, into South Australia, into the bush, and far, far away from Sydney. This is another country. The towns are quiet, spacious, flat, with wide streets and no traffic. The people are large and slow talking, slow walking. The names speak of the days when Australia rose to prosperity on the sheep’s back, and wheat and cotton; Narrandera, Hay, Balranald. And the earliest winemaking areas; Mildura, Renmark.

The Murray River looks full and sleek here, thanks to the massive rains of the last couple of months; there is water everywhere.

Two days ago we set out from Moruya and decide to go west. The extreme wet this year has hanged our plans. Warwick knows his stuff and if he says, “Those roads are impassable,” we listen. So we are heading for Port Augusta in South Australia where we will get another update.

But the car and trailer are way too clean, so we take a narrow dirt track over the mountains from the coast to Araluen and Braidwood. This seems to do the trick – the rain helped too – and by the time we reach the other side there is a satisfying coating of clay and we look as if we mean business.

It’s a lovely drive, too, a very steep road winding up and up through spectacular coastal forest, the trees changing around almost every bend. There is dappled light lying across the road, a mist on the hilltops.

The slope falls away beside the road down a thousand metres, then lifts on the other side of the valley in layers of rounded velvety hills in shades of blue layered into the distance.

We’re trying out the 2-way radio, a new toy (sorry, rescue and recovery aid). R calls several times, then someone suddenly answers. Is it a truck on the road? No just some bloke in Moruya. Still, we know it works.

Now all this exquisite beauty is in contrast to the place names. How would you like togrong live in Togganoggera? Or Wantabadgery? Beggan Beggan? Brawlin? Jinglemoney, or maybe Grong Grong? That’s Australia for you, I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, of very lovely places and very funny names.

Over the hill the countryside opens out to the plains around Canberra. Lake George is nearby, and Queanbeyan. But we are headin’ West.

Of course we must stop at the Dog on the Tuckerbox, 5 miles from Gundagai, it would be un-Australian to drive past. It is truly ugly and ridiculous, commemorating a legend about a dog sitting on a bloke’s lunchbox when he goes to get something to eat after a cow of a day. Stone the crows it was the last flamin’ straw. Or so the story goes. There are several nasty little buildings around an amateurish statue of the dog. Whatever would the tourists make of it? Busloads of people, dozens of school students, and, really, nothing to see for all the fuss. But we do our civic duty, take the photo and head for Junee.

This town is a surprise, you only ever hear about the prison (sorry, Correctional Centre) but the town is very pretty, with the historic buildings preserved and painted, so that it could almost be a Ye Olde Towne except that it is, well, real. And as a result charming and very attractive, with an outstanding original railway station, very large and elaborate, because this was the railhead for the district. And there are still huge silos and sheds everywhere around.

It’s getting flatter and sparser all the time and the properties are getting larger. We are looking for somewhere camp beside the Murrumbidgee River. We get close, but can’t find a spot, so we go onto a farm to ask. No-one there, this is vast, but as we turn and leave we meet a woman coming in who tells us we can camp here.

It’s beautiful a tiny bridge, a path of grass. I put on my gumboots in case of snakes, then we put up the tent and settle in. A massive flock of white cockatoos comes screeching in for the night, and in the morning we wake to the sound of kookaburras.