May 2018

In Cobar, NSW our favourite freedom camp the Newey Reservoir has been closed, but a kind local directs us to the skate Park which has now become the unofficial freedom camp. The story goes that thanks to a resident complaining to the Lands Dept in Sydney about campers’ dogs upsetting her precious pooch, beautiful Newey Reservoir has been closed to campers. Local residents want to keep a freedom camp open to bring cash flow to the town, after all if people stay the night they will spend money. It is surprising how fuel and grocery purchases add up. We’ve stayed in some funny places but this is a first for us, a Skate Park, now how about that.

There are ten RV’s in for the night and the town park is beside us, all green lawns and date palms. Across the road is an open cut that was once a part of the first Cobar mine. They mined for copper, gold and silver here and lost a horse a day on the process.

The Cobar RSL club is right beside the skate park so we scrub up and toddle next door to thank the people of Cobar for their hospitality. It’s Friday night at the RSL and there are miners in their denim and fluoro shirts, families with kids in PJ’s, grey Nomads chatting. There’s a Chinese, Malay, Thai restaurant off to the side of the dance floor run by a Filipino chef. You can’t get more Aussie than that now can you? It’s busy with diners and bags of take away tubs are going out the door like crazy and all to the background music of spatulas slapping on blackened tin woks. It’s good tucker too. Good on you Cobar.