During the night the cloud had moved in and rain looked to be threatening. Based on the local forecast, the rain was less than 24 hours away.
Our target departure time was 7:30am and we planned to drive to Cobar for our next overnight stop. With the cloud cover and very little wind, conditions were almost perfect for driving. The traffic was relatively light and we set cruise control at 85kph in an endeavour to maximise our endurance. Other than road houses, the only town between Broken Hill and Cobar is Wilcannia and we had no desire to stop there.
Traffic was light (as you would expect in outback NSW) and due to the fact that the outback is actually very wet, there was no evidence of the volume of road kill that we have seen on other trips. We saw a lot of goats and emu but only a couple of kangaroos and they were well away from the road. We did have one encounter with a roo that stood in the middle of the road but he departed when we were about 100m away (and under brakes).
We stopped at the Emmdale roadhouse and were very surprised that the new owner had made significant changes. The public area had been expanded with tables available both inside and outside, fresh hot food was available and a coffee machine had been installed. The outdoor toilet (back in the old days you would not go near it) had been refurbished and was under lock and key. What a surprise!! Last time we wrote about this place we bagged it, this time we can only praise it.
We arrived at Cobar mid afternoon and after refuelling (we had fuel warning lights on) we decided to continue a further 124k’s to Nyngan. We called ahead and were informed that there was plenty of space available.
With one eye on the fuel gauge, we set the cruise control at a steady 80k’s per hour again attempting to reduce our fuel consumption.
We arrived at Nyngan just after 4:00pm. The caravan park was virtually deserted and we chose the site that we camped on when we last visited during the Winnebago RV club Opal Safari. There was no atmosphere at all in the park and with the pending threat of rain, it felt very strange.
There was virtually no television reception so we setup the satellite dish. This was the first time that the dish was positioned using an app on our android phone and it worked a treat. We were however surprised when we started to watch television that the picture was far from perfect and started to break up. At this time the receiver decided to perform a software update and 30 minutes later we very watching stunning television.
We had a relatively late night as a result of watching the “Footy Show”.