MAP FREAK

Eighteen years ago I bought a map of Australia ... not just any sort of map. This one had white lines on it! The idea was to colour in those lines when you had traveled on that road. It’s been an ongoing fun exercise to use different colours to fill-in the roads traversed.

That’s why we are in Nyngan! We’ve been here before, but have never traveled the long, straight road north-west between Nyngan and Bourke. It was a gap on the map! We’ve travelled the Kidman Way from Jerilderie to Bourke, which would have been a shorter route from Cobar. But on this [rare] occasion, I opted for the ‘long-cut’ so that when we return home we can fill-in this road. Also, we’d never traveled the road from Wilcannia to Cobar to Nyngan. So that can be added to the map, too. Back in May in Queensland, we drove NEW TERRITORY for us from Winton to Hughenden – more lines to fill in.

That was one reason we opted for the inland route in Western Australia. Travelling south from Newman to Kalgoorlie, via Mt. Magnet and Leinster was mainly new ... we’d only covered a few short stretches previously ... sometimes in the opposite direction.

But after Bourke I don’t think we can find any new roads home to the Sunshine Coast. We've been to Bourke lots of times. A friend’s daughter studied there. So all the route options have been utilized.

Last time we travelled north through New South Wales to Queensland on the Kidman Way, we were astonished north of Cobar to suddenly be driving through high, lush, green grass. Rain had fallen which we hadn’t heard about. What a different landscape to what we remembered of the area – dry and grassless. However, we’re not expecting to have that experience on this trip as we near the Queensland border.

Speaking of which, we’re not too far off that border [could make it in a couple of days if we tried] but it will be good to wake up with the clocks showing the time which relates to the level of the sun above the horizon!!!