The Coombah roadhouse is the only roadhouse or in fact commercial building on the 266 kilometres of Silver City Highway between Wentworth and Broken Hill in south western NSW. This used to be known as the ‘Crystal Highway’ because of the amount of broken windscreen glass on the road but windscreens are better constructed these days.

To break the monotony on this long straight north south highway, emus dash across the road when you least expect it. Whilst driving one tends to say “oh look there’s an emu running beside us” and before you know it he’s dashing across the road in front of you and hopefully missing you by a feather or two. They can make an awful mess.

Getting back to the Coombah roadhouse, the sign on the ‘Blokes & Sheilas’ says that if you want to use the toilets then you must make a purchase or else pee in the scrub, fair enough, we buy a drink. Behind the counter there is a picture of the roadhouse as it was in 1963, funny, it looks much the same as it does now, progress is obviously slower than the emus in these parts.