03/05/26 It's Raining In Wilcannia

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 Rain spattered on the tent and I dithered from 4am, reading the weather forecast and tying to guess the condition of the road north. The problem lay in the black soil of the flood plains. At best it was like a highway, at worst it was a sea of dust, when wet it was slippery glue. I met a couple from Charleville while I was hanging out in the laundry charging my phone, and they had just come from Tilpa. He was quite excited to hear about my bicycle ride: he'd been a keen cyclist in the day, once riding from Charleville to Birdsville with a group of mates, just for fun. "Tell you what" he said, "Let's go for a run out along the road, see what it's like."

So we did. It was rideable, I decided. The rain had laid the dust nicely and I was convinced that the weather was now clearing. Time to sally forth to the Wilcannia Community Grocer to stock up for the next 6 days. Myself and half the town turned up at the advertised Sunday opening hour of 09:00, to a resolutely closed grocery store. I blamed the party last night. I reckoned most of Wilcannia was nursing a headache this morning.

The lack of groceries was the final nail in the coffin of the day's ride, committing me to spending an involuntary day off enjoying the sights and sounds of Wilcannia. "There's a cafe in town," said my bike snidely, still a little put out that it's bakery detector hadn't had a lot of use in the last 800ish km.

I tried to extend my site booking but the silly online booking system booked me in to the site next door instead. I refused to move. Should someone turn up booked into where I was I'd just try to persuade them to camp next door, where I was supposed to be, instead. I settled in to the laundry to catch up on my journal entries while clouds rolled over outside, and rain began to fall. And fall. And fall.

I watched the day's rainfall tally rise and gloomily checked the Central Darling Council's road status updates. By 5pm it was confirmed: the West Tilpa Road was CLOSED until further notice. At 6pm four 4wds rolled into camp. Mud caked the front of their vans and up to the windows of the vehicles. The drivers were muddy up to their knees and talked in loud excited voices as they hosed down their rigs. "We left Trilby Station and it was just spitting, and then in no time it was proper rain and we were sliding all over the place!" They'd had to tow each other out of trouble. " We had trouble just standing up, it was so slippery! The rain just came out of nowhere!" My friends from Charleville rolled their eyes. "We were camped with them at Trilby. We left early because of the forecast rain. Came out of nowhere my foot!"

I refrained from commenting on the wisdom or not of reading weather forecasts, and retired to my soggy tent to obsessively check both the weather forecast and the road status report. Alas, there would be no travelling for me tomorrow.

"Good," said my bicycle. "We can go back to the cafe."

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