Day 100 Friday 3/9/21 Barringun to Hillston, pleasant 26 light cloud

We wake early after a quiet night. The whizzbang has already gone. We cross the border at 7:50 while the police and military are having breakfast by the fire.

The grass is knee deep and what a difference to 2018 when there was nothing but dirt as far as the eye could see and not a blade of grass. Other than goats we see little else, it feels like a Sunday. Coming into Bourke we see only a few cars, the odd person walking the street and only 4 trucks on this whole stretch. Bourke is in the grip of Covid so we don’t stop to stretch our legs until we’ve left town.

We marvel at how these trips are like an outdoor classroom as we see emus walking about like mobile bushes and perfectly camouflaged in the now high grass. We do a lap of Cobar trying to find fuel which is located on the Barrier Highway. We soon realise that everyone else has the same thing in mind and every caravan within cooee is either queued up or blocking the pumps and the street. The place is a circus with people dragging on masks and trying to scan QR codes using the Qld app instead of the NSW app. We fill up and grab a couple of pies and head for the town rest area. We top up ourselves, the water tanks and empty the toilet before trying to drive off with the kitchen window open. We never learn.

Someone must have drawn a line through Cobar as the vegetation to the south is green and lush, the gums are different, the red soil has gone and now we see wheat crops and wattles in bloom. We stretch our legs again at Gilgunnia then head off towards Mt Hope. Now that the trucks have passed through for the day we have miles of empty road with only the occasional farm ute.

Two kilometres south of Hillston we call it a day. We’re more than half way through NSW though we won’t make it in the required 24 hours. There’s a neat and tidy rest area all on bitumen with flushing toilets and a picnic table. We sit outside and drink a little too much as this might be our last night on the road together for this trip. On top of that we are just a little excited seeing real green grass. We ring Toothless and Madam Secretary over at 80 Mile Beach in WA and tell them of our progress and then it starts to rain. There’s a feeling of being in ‘no man’s land’. Welcome to the south.

Accom: 0

Towing Kms: 570Kms