27/04/26 Bush Camp to Menindee

 The goats had forgotten all about me by morning, and grazed contentedly past my tent as I lay and watched the rising sun slowly erase the stars.  

I puttered around packing up camp, enjoying the peace and quiet, and what do you know along came a farmer on his ATV, puttering in circles across the paddock. This was quite off-putting for any morning activities which required partial nudity, as I had to keep a wary eye on him (could have been a her, I couldn't tell) in case they decided to come and say a jolly good morning. Which they didn't, and I escaped to the road with my dignity intact.

The road was brand new and as such quite boring. Construction had cleared all the trees away: there were no random puddles of shade in which to take a breather and no bushes to shelter twittering little birds. Fences marched along on both sides, sternly dressed in barbed wire and netting and I didn't see a single goat that wasn't safely behind them. I dreamed of the motel room waiting for me in Menindee and turned the pedals, counting down by the 5km markers along the road.

Tolarno shearing shed. Tolarno Station advertised station stays, but i couldnt get in touch with them. "I dropped in there a week ago," said Tom from Outback Almonds. "The place was deserted. It was creepy." No Tolarno station stay for me, then.

Along came an emu, the first (live) one of the trip. As emus do it panicked at the sight of me and ran helter skelter along the fence, stopping every so often and running back toward me before panicking all over again and starting the whole process on repeat. This entertained me for almost 3 km, pedalling along saying under my breath: "Any minute now it's going to make a hard left and run across the road. Any minute now..." Which it did, as emus do, and had I been a car I'd have run right over it. Off roared Mr Emu into the bush on the other side of the road, slap-bang up against the fence which bounced it back to me. The flustered bird sat in a cloud of feathers, shaking it's silly little head as I chugged past, and then it ran away again. Emus haven't gotten any smarter since I was child.

No sooner had the emu entertainment ended than lo and behold a kangaroo came along and did the same jolly thing, minus the feathers of course. Before I knew it 10km had zoomed past while silly animals did silly things.

Life got boring after that. I stopped and sat under a tree to eat my lunch, which I was obliged to share with my faithful fly family. My caravan friends from Pooncarie roared past while I ate, tooting their horns and waving wildly. Back on the road a wedge-tailed eagle stalked some roadkill, retreating to a handy tree as I came by.

A not-boring bit: red sandhills and water storage.

Menindee lay on the edges of the Menindee Lakes, a complex of fresh water lakes and wetlands which included the Kinchega National Park. The Menindee Lakes were also managed as water reservoirs, part of the larger Murray-Darling Basin management plan. Everyone I spoke to had strong opinions about the management of the Darling, and the Menindee Lakes in particular. Everyone was very critical of whoever was immediately upstream of them, and everyone was also of course the most responsible and astute water manager one could ever hope to meet. All the opinions aside, I had indisputably ridden out of the area of unseasonal rain: the roadside was dry and bare, the dams held mere puddles in the bottom, and the water in the Darling was heavy with silt and low between steep banks of dried mud.

Menindee arrived as advertised, right on 60km and boasting about being the first town on the Darling River.  

I rolled into the Burke & Wills Motel, which was somewhat tired and definitely lagging behind the 20th century. Alone in the office, the proprieter did manful battle with the interwebs but despite our best efforts his machines would not accept my money and eventually we had to agree that I'd come back to the office tomorrow and we'd try again. He let me use the laundry for free, and I set to work cluttering up my motel room with bicycle, exploded pannier contents, and washing hanging up to dry.

Home for a couple of nights: Burke & Wills Motel, Menindee.

I caught the Supermarket just before it closed. Nothing had a price on it, which was disconcerting to say the least, so I took some wild guesses and cobbled together something to microwave for my dinner. As I walked out the cashier was already rolling down the shutters and locking the door. I walked down the main street, peeked into the windows of the charity shop, read the information signs outside the Post Office and the bare space that was once the Aboriginal Mission, and went home to bed.

Old church.

Menindee garden.