08/05/26 Bush Camp to Tilpa

-

 My early start didn't happen: I waited for the sun to thaw me out before I even started the breakfast/packing up routine.

The colours of the flood plain changed from yesterday's ride. The line of trees marking the river danced back and forth, at times tantalisingly close and at times far away across plains furred with black clumps of tumbleweed that piled itself against the fences.


The black tumbleweed, also known as hairy panic or roly poly, turns black when it dies. It blows away with the wind and under the right conditions can cause huge drifts against fences and buildings.

Distance markers marched by at 10km intervals, not that they did me any good because they counted down the distance to Bourke and that was too far away for me to think about. All I wanted was a count down to Tilpa.

Finally! A Tilpa sign.



Home for the night: Tilpa Pub.

 Unlike the earlier river towns, Tilpa had not weathered the end of the river trade well. There was no trace left of the bustling port that once flourished on the river and the pub was the only business in town. I took a look at the free camping beyond the levee bank and turned my nose up at the shower block backed by a septic pit swimming in questionable water and noxious odours. Back at the pub a young Irish couple enquired about a room for the night. "Two rooms left," said the bartender. "$50 per person for the night." I couldn't help myself, next thing I knew I had the final room at the Tilpa Pub for the night and even had access to a little kitchen, BYO water because everything in the taps came straight from the river. Let me tell you, hot river water was just as good in the shower as any other water could possibly have been.

I went for a walk around Tilpa, which didn't take very long.


I walked across the bridge over the Darling at Tilpa. The river, still and green, lay at the bottom of the longest boat ramp I had ever seen. Whistling kites sang in the trees and somewhere a kookaburra chuckled goodnight.



A boat ramp to accommodate all river levels.

I shared a congenial pub dining room with the Irish couple who were Darwin-bound with 5 days to get there and a well-heeled pair of Sydney-siders who had seen the Tilpa Pub on a TV program and driven all the way to Tilpa just to stay there. "The water's yellow!" she told me, a little discombobulated by the details of staying in Tilpa that the TV show had neglected to mention. "The kettle doesn't turn off itself," I said. "So you can boil it for as long as you want. Then just shut your eyes while you drink it."

She didn't look convinced.

I went to bed.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Railway Scones

-
Image
The Railway Museum at Milang inhabited a collection of old carriages overlooking Lake Alexandrina. Staffed entirely by volunteers, it celebrated all things light rail: the forgotten little railways that hauled things between mines and around industrial sites without any of the kudos and fanfare of the suburban and intercity networks.   In a fine example of procrasti-snacking, we took ourselves to the Railway Museum for afternoon tea rather than face sorting through stuff in the storage shed. A group of jolly geriatric hikers had just finished scoffing their scones and vacated their seats for us.  "They all live on the other side of the Peninsula," confided the walk leader. "But I live on this side so I organised a walk and made them come over the hill."   "We walk once a month," chimed in a tiny little lady with a big backpack. "But the walks get slower as we get older."  Not that they looked particularly slow to me as they bounced down the steps...
Read more

About Chooks.

-
Image
Here we are looking after Big Fluffy while his humans go gallivanting overseas. Big Fluffy is a dog and as such he's needy: he needs walks, people time, food, someone to chase him inside when he morphs into Barky McBarkface, etc etc  We've looked after dogs that couldn't be left outside and needed a human to let them out every couple of hours to do business which humans (us) then had to pick up.   Obligatory Big Fluffy photo. Big Fluffy is not a cat.  Cats exist on a higher plane, deigning to grant to humans the privilege of attending to their needs and accepting with graciousness a lap to lie on, regular food, and preferably a little outside time and a warm spot in winter.   Given a water bubbler, an automatic feeder, and a decent kitty litter setup a cat could be left alone overnight or even for a weekend.  "We don't care," cat owners chirp blithely, "Just leave some food and head out for the weekend."  Which, being the responsible little house ...
Read more

Boat-related Excitement on Wallaroo Waters

-
Image
 Morning coffee at The Shores Eatery is never dull.  Last time we were there we were privy to the saga of the men in wet suits working to remove some unidentified but obviously well-buried item from the sand at the bottom of the swimming enclosure.  This time around we sat outside with the brunch crowd, minding our own business and commenting on how every weekend brings more people to Wallaroo as the summer gets under way.  Prawn trawlers and crab boats littered the far horizon of the bay, the pre-Christmas prawn season having started a couple of days ago. My resident Man With Binoculars keeps a close eye on the working movements of the prawn trawlers. As we sipped our coffee (in my case, tea) it became clear that one of the trawlers was motoring purposefully toward the jetty.  The brunch crowd perked up and, as one, shuffled their chairs around for a better view, because the prawn trawlers usually headed over toward the marina which was nowhere near the jetty. ...
Read more