Days 4 - 9 (19/4 - 24/4): Culgoa National Park to Tilpa (Morowari - Ngemba - Barkindji countries) (including maybe Bardaji, Murrawari and Nyirrpa countries as well)

DAY 4 (19/4): We are officially stuffed after walking 11.5km and cycling for 10km today so it will be an early night.

We decided to get an early start for our walk, since it is quite hot out here (reaching 30 degrees today) and most of the country is pretty exposed with only dappled shade. At 7:30 we started out by cycling to the start of the Yuruwa Track (Sandhill Track) a little over 5km away from our camp. Thank goodness we brought the bikes. An extra 10km of walking would have been too much in our currently unfit state.

The walk traversed a range of different habitats and soil types. We started off in the black soil country, where the slightest bit of rain makes the roads/paths unpassable. Despite the two floods here last year, the country has well and truly dried out and the black soil has returned to its dangerous pot-holiness. Apparently each year numbers of heads of cattle have to be put down because they break a leg by falling into the ruts and holes made when the black soil shrinks upon drying.

After hiding our bikes in the bushes, we were soon treated to a cuckoo of some description feeding on one of those caterpillar nests you often see in outback trees. I've never seen one being attacked before and the bird did not seem to be frightened of us looking on.

The black soil soon gave way to a more sandy brown soil, which in turn gave way to brown sand and harder walking then to red sand and sandhills!

The country was quite varied for the first half of the walk, including claypans with short tufty plants, treed bushland and then finally as we climbed up the sand hills, beautiful White Cypress-pine forest.

The cypress-pines have obviously suffered from the long drought preceding last year's floods. Many of the large trees were dead but there are thousands of young trees growing to replace them. Heartening to see.

About one kilometre of the walk was along the main road through the national park. We encountered no vehicles and the sky was so picturesque against the red sand that even a walk along the road was good.

The last third of the walk was a little tiresome - very soft sand and nothing different to what we had already seen. Also, the flies were beginning to get quite tiresome!

By the time we reached the end of the loop - 11.5km not the advertised 10km - we were very glad we had made the choice to ride from camp to the start rather than walk! Another 5km of walking would have done us in. As it was, the corrugated ride back on the bikes was plenty tiring enough for me.

Afternoon was spent doing not a lot! We had enough time out in the sun, so we read, I went through some photos and we generally lazed about, until I got the urge to walk back down to the river to watch for birds. I sat on a fallen tree trunk for ages, watching whatever happened to pass by. Not much really - strangely quiet really considering that we had heard more bird life on our walk than here by the river. You'd think with the little water left around that anything would visit the river, especially towards the end of the day. Antics by a Brown Treecreeper and Restless Flycatchers kept me amused.

Also, the trees around here are beautiful. Even the dead ones have beautiful shapes against the sky.

Sunset was beautiful too and the colours lingered for ages.

We lit our first campfire of the trip and cooked over it. Bliss!

DAY 5 (20/4): A few nervous moments today. Firstly, when we collected firewood a couple of days ago we parked the car on a steep side of the road and when we moved off again our fuel tank gauge was on the lowest level (no mod-cons in this car that give you an estimated number of kms to go). This was surprising but we thought the fuel gauge might reset itself when we had been level for a while. Not so. Could we follow our plan and use our second tank to get to Bourke where the next fuel is? We decided to take a gamble and trust that our instincts about the amount of fuel we should have as opposed to the amount of fuel shown remaining on our gauge.

Next nervous moment was when we realised we'd added 60 unnecessary kms onto our journey! We decided to go into Culgoa Floodplains National Park by a different route, the western route to our next camp at Nebine Creek Camp and took the Toulby Gate track off the main road only to get to the Gate and find it locked! The route through is no longer open or serviced. That made our fuel nerves a bit more on edge. Nevertheless, backwards we went first, then onwards we pressed, back to Redbank Hut for morning tea and thence to the western park of the Culgoa Floodplain National Park.

On the Toulby Gate track we did pass the old Dingo Fence, still with a track going alongside it, but very much not dingo or dog proof. We also passed through a forest of these trees under which nothing much else seems to grow. Rather lovely though.

Once back in the Culgoa Floodplains National Park, we encountered a couple of the parks renowned reptiles sunbaking on the road. The first is a Sand Goanna, the second a Shingleback Lizard - I think.

Part of the track is also bordered by an exclusion fence as shown in the next picture. The colours of the area are wonderful.

160 km after our main fuel tank gauge showing the lowest rank, we arrived at our campsite, still not having touched the reserve tank. Problem averted!

There was no water in Nebine Creek, only the cracked mud of the dried up creek bed. The patterns of this cracking are fantastic. Some animal tracks made for interesting features in the dried mud too.

Some sort of gall-producing insect made an artwork on Eucalyptus leaves to vie any human-created art!

Another moth night revealed yet more amazing creatures. Here is a praying mantis nymph, a wasp and a couple of moths I found.

DAY 6 (21/4): Another fine day presented itself to us for our trip to follow the Culgoa down to Bourke. We avoided plenty of emus as has been the case for the last few days. Emus are everywhere at the moment.

Unfortunately, the place where the Barwon and Culgoa meet, the official starting point of the Darling, appears to be on private property so we couldn’t get there. Bourke is the next best thing. We decided, therefore, to at least follow the Culgoa to Bourke so wended our way back to

Weilmoringle, then started out on the Bourke road.

Our River Journey began by checking out the Culgoa River at Welmoringle. What looked like a river in one side of the bridge turns out to be a billabong. Only a puddle on the other side. A small start.

It appears that sheep are out and cattle are in, around this part of the country. We passed another woolshed that, just like the Weilmoringle one, has seen better days.

However, there must still be some serious money to be made out here. At one stage, not far out of Weilmoringle, we saw a property that appeared to be at least partially fenced with an exclusion fence which continued for at least 10km along the road! At at least 1.6m high and with mesh fencing, this must have cost a fortune!

We had morning tea on the side of the road at a nondescript sort of place, the road not presenting us with an opportunity to actually get to the river. We did go down one track that looked as though it led to a waterhole indicated on a map, but when we saw flocks of sheep around we headed back – no farmer likes their stock disturbed unnecessarily.

Not long before the road hit the Mitchell Hwy (Bourke to Cunnamulla), we dropped in at a free camp along the Darling River. The relatively recent rains mean that there are soooo many weeds, but the River Red Gums along this stretch of the river were mighty!

There was another free camp to check out a little closer to town and we decided to go into Bourke since we had arrived by early afternoon and with Bourke less than 20 km away, it represented a good place to replenish our fuel supply! I also needed to find a post office to send some birthday cards. Up to this point, we had passed four cars and seen one person outside of a car (the school teacher/principal at Weilmoringle) in the last four days.

We first went to the Mary’s Bend campground and discovered that there were two lots of campers there already. A pretty bend in the river but the trees not quite as magnificent as at the previous place. However, we decided that this was probably the more sensible place to camp as we intend to go to Bourke again tomorrow. Had lunch here.

We did our tasks in Bourke (diesel was 10c/L more than in Grafton) but were not able to find anywhere with our little gas cannisters that we like to use on our ‘choofer’ for tea and coffee during the day. Silly me – I meant to buy another cannister before leaving. No matter – we’ll survive.

Shopping was an experience not unlike some places in the NT. An aboriginal woman didn't have enough money to pay for her trolley-load of groceries and a guy came in and 'went off his nut' telling the poor check-out chick, a new-comer to this country, to let her have the groceries. Fortunately, a security guard came and diffused the situation - problem averted. I was next in the queue but had a chap pull me aside, telling me to go away and not look as if I was looking at them - to avoid the scene turning catastrophic.

Back out to the river to set up camp. Not a bad spot, even if there were 6 other lots of campers!

DAY 7 (22/4): Bourke to Gundamooka National Park

We started our day off with a visit to the Bourke Visitor Information Centre, for coffee at the cafe, a wander around a new sculpture garden that is in the making, and to see the exhibition they have there.

The sculpture garden has some interesting pieces and has the bones of a really good spot. Still a lot of landscaping to do. Here are some of the pieces.

There was another special one of what appears to be my 'totem' bird - it follows me wherever I go, and I mean wherever!

At $21/$23 a head the exhibition in the visitor centre is not cheap, but it is excellent. It starts with an animated film about the Darling and its aboriginal and modern history to start with. So impressive! We learned later that is has won 84 different awards. It is only viewable here in Bourke. The rest of the exhibition was about the colonial history of the town and surrounding areas. Very interesting but so full of information that we got ‘informationed-out’. The tickets allow you to go into the exhibition for two consecutive days. I now know why. A pity we don’t intend to be here tomorrow.

One thing we did learn while in Bourke is that, not unlike Palm Island in Queensland, it was one of the centres to which Aboriginal people from many different nations were sent by police and the church as they took women and children away from their traditional home grounds. This accounts for some of the myriad of subsequent issues involving the Aboriginal people here.

After finishing up at the Visitor Centre we drove around the historic buildings of Bourke. Being a very old town (dating back to the early 1860s), there are lots of interesting old buildings. The Court House and the Lands Title Building were my favourites. I guess government was the main money around at the time.

There is a replica of the wharf that was around in the late 1800s for the paddlesteamers that were used to ship wool and other produce down river. Hard to believe these days with all the trees lying in the river, that the river was ever navigable by such boats. The view up and down river from the wharf is lovely. The Darling is a mighty river – not quite Clarence River scale, but mighty all the same. Pete had his first touch of the Darling here.

After completing a top-up grocery shop, we started down the east side of the Darling River, destination Gundabooka National Park. We lunched at one campground, but there was little to do there, so we opted to move on after enjoying lunch by the river.

On the way to the new campground, some 40 odd kilometres away, we passed by one of the old huts used by the stations that once existed here. We wandered around the yards and went inside. Pete tried out one of the beds.

By the time we reached the campground it was mid afternoon and we ended up spending a lazy time in the campground, with just a quick walk to exercise ourselves before dinner.

A short moth watch yielded 35 different species of moths and a few beetles, bugs and wasps as well.

I spent the rest of the evening being beaten by Pete at Rummytiles!

DAY 8 (23/4): Today was a day of walks and nothing much. The Little Hill Lookout walk starts off from the campground so we began with that. It is a little over 4km return and an easy walk. The view from the Lookout is worth the hike. You are able to look out over the Mount Gundabooka range and over the flat lands surrounding it.

This range is really one blip in a very flat landscape. The walk up to the lookout passes mainly through mulga country (mulga being a dryland species of Acacia). I think now, that is what we must have been passing though on our misguided venture to Toulbey Gate in the Culgoa NP. It is a small tree, with very grey, small and narrow, leathery leaves. It is almost silvery in the middle of the day.

Another hiccough in our planning is our gas situation. We thought we had two full bottles (they are only small 4kg ones) for our cooking and hot water, but I think they were both quite low. We have already run out in one and hope we can get a replacement before number two runs out. We did toy with returning to Bourke but we’ll trust our luck again. It is not as if we will starve. We always have fruit, raw vegies and maybe even bread!

We wandered around and about the campground for a while, then became entranced by the antics of a Red-capped Robin. I had been looking at my birding app to find out what it was, played the song to hear if it sounded like what I had heard, then Mr. Robin came to look for the intruder! It hung around for ages, and finally gave up being wary of us to allow me a couple of good photos. A beautiful bird.

After a latish lunch, we headed off in the truck (we had taken the camper off when we arrived) to another walk about 30km away. This was to see some Aboriginal rock art. There was quite a lot of art in a large overhang area but only, it seems, in this one area. Worth visiting though.

The rock must be part of the foothills of the Gundabooka Range. The rest of the walk was along a dry creek bed, overhung by beautiful stringy-bark trees. It would be wonderful to see this area when the water is running.

To finish off the day we decided to return to Little Mountain Lookout for sunset. I started earlier than Pete as I had seen a few things on the way up in the morning that I wanted to inspect a little more closely.

Pete raced up after me, after having packed a little sunset hamper to share at the top.

Such a beautiful spot with the changing sunset colours.

On the way down, we continued to watch the sunset of a clear sky with a new moon becoming brighter and brighter on the way down. Everything else was dark by the time we returned to camp.

DAY 9 (24/4): We opted for an early start this morning as we wanted to climb to the top of Mount Gundabooka on the Wedgetail Eagle Walk. We have figured that earlyish walks are the way to go to avoid the middle-of-the-day heat. We had mostly packed up last night so we were off by 7:30. Probably a bit later than we had intended but still fine. We had a 20km drive to reach the start of the walk which is at the base of the Gundabooka Range that we were viewing yesterday from Little Hill Lookout. The first kilometre is easy going, the rest is all uphill on very rocky ground.

Reflecting the walk's name and as if to make sure we made our way safely to the top, wedgetail eagles soared above us at regular intervals. They were certainly checking us out.

From about ¾ of the way up and at the top there are wonderful views back to the Little Hill Lookout and the plains all around. There is a beautiful cypress-pine woodland at the top.

After hiking back down we decided to have morning tea in the shade of a shelter at the start of the walk. While we were getting ready, another car pulled in and the lady started complimenting the truck and camper and asking Pete about it. I joined in the conversation, thinking that the woman looked very familiar and trying to place her. As chance would have it, we had met up with the parents of two students I taught (in different years) at Bishop Druitt College in Coffs Harbour! What are the chances? It was wonderful to hear what the kids are up to – one of them has ended up living in Bourke! What a shame I hadn’t known earlier.

After finishing our chat over coffee, and once the couple we were talking to had left for their walk up the mountain, Pete realised that he had left a pair of reading glasses up the top! Were we tempted to go and retrieve them? No – we left them to their mountain top view (he does have a spare set) and continued down the Darling to Louth, then Tilpa.

Louth is a funny little town. It has a cricket ground and a racecourse despite only have a current population of around 25! It has two sight-seeing venues outside of cricket season and race day. One is the cemetery, the other is the pub.

The cemetery is famous for a monument to the first wife of a man who basically developed the area of Louth in the 1860s. She died in 1868 and he had a monument shipped up from Victoria (granite from Phillip Island, monument made in Bendigo). The paddlesteamer it was brought up on made the record for the longest and shortest trips along the Darling River. On the way up, it got stranded because of lack of water in the river at Wilcannia. Three years later it made its way to Louth. However, the same paddlesteamer made it back to Victoria in just 9 days – riding a surge of water downstream!

The pub is famous for being the only place to be in Louth, so we went there for lunch. We enjoyed a good chicken schnitzel burger and chips and ginger beer!

And of course, there is the wonderful Darling River.

Then onwards towards Tilpa. We chose to go down the eastern route. (There are almost always two options – one on the east side of the river, the other on the west.) The road was quite bull-dusty in parts and unfortunately, about 7km out of Tilpa we had to slow down past an accident where a motor cyclist had fallen from his bike. Luckily someone had found him before us and they had the situation under control – just awaiting an ambulance. Not far down the road, two ambulances came racing towards us. No option but to pull off the road. We learned later that the chap will be okay and that he was being helicoptered out to Cobar. At least one of the ambulances came from there, the other perhaps from Wilcannia! That’s a long time to wait for help.

At Tilpa we enjoyed a beer at the pub, then retraced our way for a few kilometres to the Tilpa Weir where we set up camp right above the noise of the rushing water and, during daylight hours, the fishing haven for hundreds of birds, mostly White-necked Herons and Greater Egrets. Fascinating to watch.