We left Cobar at daybreak, when the sun was rising just out of the horizon. The change in the colour of clouds was reflected upon our car as we sped through the barren landscape. There were almost no cars on the road before we got to Broken Hill. The land was arid, but we still saw some animals - lots of wild goats, one kangaroo and a handful of emus. The emus stared at us as if we were aliens, and the kangaroo ran away quickly.
Just before I left for Darwin, I had a patient in ICU who told me lots of scary things about outback Western NSW, and according to him, the worst part was Wilcannia, where he alleged the petrol was often sugared and people robbed. It was rather frightful looking, with just a few decrepit caravans alongside the dust blown road. The only petrol station was run down and right next to an abandoned building with broken windows. The biggest building in town was the court house, which was painted with all sorts of graffiti. I was glad then, that we had advance notice to avoid it altogether, or we might not have been so careful with our petrol.
We stopped for a stroll and a coffee from Charlotte’s in Broken Hill. The main street was much like a bigger version of Cobar, with ornate facades and some buildings more than a century old.
The crossing into South Australia was very simple, and the sign flashed by before we even realised it. We stopped for lunch by the roadside in Olary, a simple two building town (one pub, one bottle shop). Here we found an abandoned train station with overgrown tracks, and it was hard to imagine what this place would have looked like once upon a time.
Train tracks at Olary
A few more small towns later, we were in Port Augusta. We drove over a stinky salt lake called “Bird Lake” where there were no birds. We were amazed by the sight of shops and supermarkets and traffic lights, after being in the bush for just two days. We stayed at a hotel right next to the port, a skinny stretch of blue sea over which there are two bridges, a modern one for traffic and an old wooden one for pedestrians. The sea looked nice enough, but when I went down to the water, I got stuck in the "sand" which was actually mud. My feet kept sinking and I ended up splashing mud everywhere.
Port Augusta
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