Day 38 - Wilcannia to Walgett

Flying home along the most direct route I can find, I visit the Back o' Bourke.

Quick Stats

• 6 hours on bike
• 648 km
• 14046 km total

The stars last night were pretty spectacular. I haven't had a good run with moon cycles or clouds this trip, so I'm glad I got some stargazing in.

Today is mostly about crunching miles. So I head off as soon as it's warm enough, aiming for breakfast and coffee two and a half hours down the road in Cobar (there's literally nothing in between).

If you like goats, I suggest taking a drive from Broken Hill to Cobar. Black goats, brown goats, white goats, baby goats, so many baby goats. You'll see thousands of them, without gap, for the entire distance.

Cobar is near active copper mines, so there's a productive town here. Like most mining towns though it's pretty much dead by 11 am on a Sunday.

I take a hard left at Cobar and head towards Bourke. Like Wilcannia, Bourke lies on the Darling River. Unlike Wilcannia, though, Bourke became a major trade hub thanks to its wharfs, bridge and railroad.

Settled in the mid 1800s, Bourke would be the indisputable hub of central NSW. The wharf on the banks of the Darling would load 40,000 bales of wool a year. Some 80 odd riverboats would then transport it to ports in South Australia or Victoria.

The riverboats ran off steam engines powered by timber cut from the banks of the Darling. This, along with aggressive farming, saw the rapid decay of the Darling River (and Murray-Darling basin), becoming far less hospitable to river transport.

After checking out the wharf, I head north of town to see the bridge. It was one of the first lifting span bridges in Australia and operated as the main access across the Darling from 1883 to 1997. Alas, they've fenced off access, and haven't really considered viewing platforms.

You'll have to trust me when I say it was pretty cool. An historic paddlesteamer chugs passed as I was trying to climb the barricade - they run tours up the river on the 1910 boat.

The sign as I enter the the Bourke Shire proclaimed it as "The Gateway to the Real Outback". It's pretty apt, even on my ride following the most furtile south west, there's not much past Bourke worth settling, let alone in the north or west.

The north and west is why the poet Will Ogilvie coined the phrase "Back o' Bourke" to mean the middle of nowhere.

Henry Lawson would also spend enough time here for it to have a profound effect on him, "if you know Bourke you know Australia". I'm not so sure if that advice is still current, but, Fred Hollows asked to be buried here of all places, so maybe there's still something to it.

I'm not so sure, having cross the bridge north, I can claim I've seen the back end though. It's time to press on another two hours, though, to a real bed for the night.

The goats finally disappear after I leave Bourke, with the scrubland replaces by more pasturelike land. Although I'm still seeing more emus than cattle or sheep.

I arrive at my motel just outside Walgett, a short wander along the river, and I'm turning in for the night. Tomorrow will be a big day.