Graham and Chris on tour 2014 – Update #3

We headed out of Bourke around 9:30 on Monday morning after ringing the guy from the council to find out if the road to Wanaaring was open. He advised us that indeed it was, but you need to take a detour by turning left at the Fords Bridge Pub. This will add about 30 kms to your trip. We had driven the Wanaaring Road in 2008 from Bourke and remembered Fords Bridge in my minds eye.  What I didn’t realize was that my minds eye was from 2012 and not 2008. In 2012 we travelled up the Hungerford Road from Bourke through Fords Bridge.

Roads closed out of Bourke

So we set off down the Wanaaring Road and subsequently came to a “ROAD CLOSED” barrier at a bridge. A little taken aback and having expected to see a detour at a place called  Fords Bridge we drove around the barrier (as had many others) and crossed the newly constructed bridge, and then proceded around the barriers on the opposite side, only to come to a “T” intersection with a road going off to our right and a sign “27 Km to Fords Bridge”. Being a little confused and not realizing the bleeding obvious I decided to get out the Sat Phone (No Mobile coverage) and ring the guy from the council again.

Yuck – mud over everything. A fair amount of slipping and sliding to get to Wanaaring

“I told you that this morning” he exclaimed. What he hadn’t made abundantly clear was that we should have travelled up the Hungerford road and turn left at Fords Bridge to miss the road closed situation at the new bridge construction on the Wanaaring Rd. After I sheepishly told him that I had already driven around his “ROAD CLOSED” barriers he said “well you might as well drive onto Wanaaring then!”. I could just imagine his comments as he got off the phone “Bloody Tourists”. Well the detour and taking the wrong road was not the last of the issues as a consequence of making that Sat Phone call. More disaster to come.

Spotted Bower Bird

On we went up the Wanaaring Rd, arriving in Wanaaring (pop 30) in time for a late lunch, set up camp in the campground attached to the general store run  by a young bloke by the name of Ben. After lunch we headed out to Nocoleche Nature Reserve to check out the bird life on the main water hole (About 30 k’s south of Wanaaring). While getting my camera out of the car I notice that the sat phone bag was empty. “Chris do you know where the sat phone is” I called out. “No haven’t seen it” was the reply “and besides you where the last one to have it”. I couldn’t argue with that fact. So we searched the car from head to toe to no avail. “It must be still where we made the call from”, we decide. So we returned to Wanaaring from the nature reserve, reported the loss to the police (local copper not on duty so automatic call through to Bourke) in case someone hands it in. We also let Ben know in case someone coming from Bourke drops it off. Ben said no worries, tell as many people as you can and you will probably get it back. So we told Narelle (publican) at the pub. Narelle advised that she was heading into Bourke (200km) the next morning and will check with the council guys on the road at the bridge construction. She said she would ring by 9:00 am if she had located the phone to save us heading off down the road to do our own search the following day.  We were not looking forward to searching 140km of roadside.

Black Kites

As we had not heard from Narelle by 10 am we headed off and took most of the day searching 140Km of roadside to no avail.

By the time we got back to camp we had decided that there was probably no hope of the phone being found so armed with a pocket full of coins I went to the solitary public phone in Wanaaring and rang our sat phone service provider and barred the account. We had not set up a pin number on the phone so were concerned that someone would run up a huge bill on our phone.

Black Kite takes flight.

Arriving back at our camp, Ben (General Store Proprietor) calls out, “How’d you get on”. “Nah we didn’t find it” I replied. “No, didn’t you get the message at the pub, Narelle has your phone” he says. A little perplexed we find out that Narelle had found out from the council guys on the road that they had found the phone the previous evening and returned it to the council offices in Bourke, the previous evening, and that while she was in town she collected the phone from the council and would return with it at around 5:30 that evening.
We were delighted, so I immediately went back to the phone box to ring our provider and have the bar taken of the phone.
It is hard to think that in the city that you would find a whole community get together to help someone out. The locals had no doubt that they would turn up with the phone somehow provided we let enough people know.
When Narelle handed us back the phone, and eager to reward appropriately I asked Narelle “Who do I owe a slab to”.  “Forget it; it’s all sorted” was her reply. What on earth that means I have not idea so I was not going to get very far with my offer of a reward.  As it happens, everybody in the outback have had some life saving experience, either for themselves, friends or relatives, with the Royal Flying Doctor Service and the best thing that anyone can do that is visiting is make a donation to the RFDS.  Every pub in the outback has their unique means of collecting donations. In Wanaaring it is an inverted umbrella hanging from the ceiling of the bar that patrons throw money into, so we threw in 50 bucks, which seemed to satisfy all concerned that the debt for the effort put in by the locals to find our phone was paid in full.

The Sentries

As a bit of a side tale, it appears that each night in the front bar of the Wanaaring pub the Satellite TV gets turned onto Eddy’s Quiz show before the Channel 9 news. So there we were watching the quiz show (what it is called these days escapes me), and everyone in the bar becomes involved with answering the questions. So there we were on our first night in Wanaaring, competing with the locals to answer the questions. During an ad break on comes the ad “You bought a Jeep!” So loud enough for the bar to hear I happened to remark, “Don’t see many of them out here!” The sniggering and chuckling fully confirming that we were in Toyota country.

“Oh What a feeling!”

After a wonderful nights on our second night in Wanaaring we set off for Tibooburra, where I now find myself typing this blog post. Tomorrow morning, Thursday the 5th June we set of to tour Sturt National Park. Despite having been through the area a number of times we have never taken the time out to explore Sturt National Park properly.

Sunset – Tibooburra

I have included a number of photos that I have taken over the last 3 days, while not related to the story, at least break up the monotony of the text (hopefully).

Check our whereabouts here.

Posts from here on will be spasmodic as we anticipate that we will have no internet access for about 3 weeks.

Any grammar or spelling issues the consequence of too many sundowners. Please excuse.

Cheers for now – Graham and Chris