Minindee

We heard about Minindee Lakes from quite a few people and decided it would be a good spot  for a few days. Minindee is about 100 kms south of Broken Hills. The lakes create a  storage system for the Darling River before it flows on into the Murray River at Wentworth. There are quite a few interconnecting lakes and in the past they supported orchards and grapevines. Not much of that left now.

Minindee township is old but there aren't many historical buildings left. It doesn't have much "personality". However Bourke and Wills set up camp on the edge of the Darling. It was the last outpost before setting out on their journey to Gulf country to try and determine if there was an inland sea. They both perished on this trip.

We bumped ten teeth-rattling kilometres over a corrugated dirt road in to the Bourke and Wills camp spot on a river and next to the Pamamaroo Lake outlet regulator. I took Rifter for a walk to watch the sunset over the lake while Greg set up camp.

Got talking to a couple of men who had caught some lovely sized yellow belly fish.

We were "natural" camping, that means camping with just our battery power and storage water. Came back to a very frustrated husband. For some unknown reason the battery system wouldn't work and that meant no lights or water. Ahhh! All the tools were out and things pulled apart... Lots of muttering and choice words. No joy. Managed to organise something to eat then crawl into bed. After a very cold night (-1C) we slowly emerged out from under as many blankets as we could find. Greg had another go at repair in day light and "fixed" the problem. Some connection had rattled off; he's SO clever, and practical. That engineering puzzle-solving brain in action.

Too cold to get out the kayak so spent the day watching the huge variety of bird life, reading, solving puzzles and I actually got out my sewing. Chilly though. Went across to our neighbour's camp fire after dinner.

The next day we drove through Kinchega National Park. It was cosy in the car with the heater on and so I finally warmed up my toes. Check out the flood levels of the rive.r

We drove along the edge of a meandering Darling River covered with majestic river red gums.

Awesome! Lots of beautiful birds. Daddy Emu and his children ran past.

It was a lovely drive on a heavily-textured, grey cracking-clay road that would be impassable in the wet. On the river bank was the boiler from the riverboat PS Providence.

Unfortunately it blew up after the crew kept stoking an empty boiler. I think there was only one survivor; a paying passenger.  The Chinese crew member was blown up into a tree but died later.  They were all buried at a nearby homestead and we checked out the 1870s ruins and cemetery.


Further away from the river the country changed to black-soil flood plains with coolibar trees and then it quickly changed again to sand plains and sand dunes. This was dry looking country devoid of trees. Equally amazing.

We looked at the historic shearing shed where six million sheep has passed through the stands in the 92 years it was operational.

That night we made our own campfire and it was warm and cosy sitting on the banks of the river with a full moon listening to the mopoke and barking owl.

It wasn't quite as I'd imagined but it was very nice not to be in a caravan park. I enjoyed camping out for a few days. Shame we didn't have the camp oven packed. Nothing beats a campfire.