We all slept in today with breakfast scheduled for 8:30am rather than the usual 8:00am. We got up when the alarm sounded at 7:00am and for the first time since leaving home, we were forced to use all the facilities in the motor home.
It is appropriate to record the benefits of travelling in a fully self contained vehicle. Our setup is relatively simple with 100 litres of fresh water (also capacity for 100 litres of grey so we only ever have 100 litres on board at any one time), 18 litres of black water (for us about 4 days of use) and two 80 watt solar panels feeding two 100 amp hour batteries. We can safely “go bush” for four days which for us is about the maximum time we would spend away from 240 volt power. We don’t carry a generator that we own but we will on future safaris. We also intend to carry spare diesel fuel in the future.
Back to today…..
Upon exiting the motor home we were greeted with a clear sky and a cool wind blowing from the south. There were some problem during breakfast with the generator on our support trailer running out of fuel (also low on oil) and then flooding during the restart process.
We were told that we could travel down either side of the river with the western side said to be in better condition than the eastern side. Our destination today was the small township of Tilba which is located about 100 kilometres south west of Louth. Yesterday we travelled 20 kilometres on the western side and found the road worse than the eastern side. Therefore we chose to join the majority of the group and travelled on the eastern side of the river.
We have many words that could be used to describe the condition of the road. After leaving Louth we found that the road allowed us to travel at a gentle 80 kph without any problems at all. However, as soon as we entered the Cobar section of the road, it became apparent that the road was in a poor condition and in places no wider than a goat track. There were several areas where washouts had reduced the width of the road and we found numerous corrugations, pot holes and depressions. Nevertheless, we managed to handle the conditions thrown at us and the Iveco performed superbly. The last couple of days has confirmed statements made by Winnebago regarding the roads that they construct their motor homes to travel on. In hind sight, we would not have travelled on the eastern road today had we been aware of the condition.
After we crossed the Darling River at Tilba, we parked the motor home in an open area near the pub. We were about the fifth motor home to arrive and we joined our fellow travellers and headed to the pub for a cold beer and a famous Tilba hamburger. There were no issues in ordering beers but we were informed that the best the pub could do were steak sandwiches as the shop that sold the famous hamburgers had closed. The steak sandwiches were actually very good as one “with the works” had steak, lettuce, beetroot, onion, tomato, egg, cheese and pineapple hey cost $9.00. Plain ones cost $7.00.
We spent part of the remaining afternoon in the pub before returning to the motor home to remove dust from the bins and then happy hour at 5:00pm.
The locals had cooked our evening meal and it was served to us in a small community hall. The meal was enjoyed by all.
We headed back to the motor home at 8:30pm, listened to some music on the Ipod and completed this blog entry.
We have no mobile coverage and can only receive one distant radio station and for the first time in a very long time, we are isolated from the outside world. It is almost heaven but we miss being in contact with the outside world and those who we love.