Mendooran & The Trip Home

I wound up staying with my mate Dave at Lightning Ridge for four nights. I did not want to rush home, after all, Sydney was in lockdown with an extension of that lockdown just announced. So on Friday morning the 16th of July I said goodbye to Dave and headed off. I was going home via Walgett, Coonamble and Mendooran to the Blue Mountains. I was hoping to get a better road than you do from Walgett to Burren Junction. Well I was wrong there wasn’t I! It was a very poor road to Coonamble. It was not good beyond there until I reached Gilgandra. It improved greatly from there for the rest of the trip home. I stopped for a cuppa about 62km out from Coonamble at a rest stop.

I went onto Coonamble and fueled up there and stopped at a rest stop in town for lunch. Up the road from the rest stop was this silo art mural. Very nice.

The Castlereagh River runs through Coonamble and I was about to be following the Castlereagh all the way to Mendooran where I was stopping for the night. The rest stop in town was right on the river but the river bank was so heavily wooded that you couldn’t see the river. It was a bit of a shame really as it would be such a good spot without it all, but I get it that it is better to ward off erosion with all the vegetation.

I reached Gulargambone and drove up the main street as there is a bit of history there. I loved these only buildings with the same roof line. I would not mind stopping for a night there one time or at least taking time to check out the history there. There is also a river walk which sounds nice.

I then made it to my destination for the night, the Mendooran Rest Area. It is a free camp and set well back from the road. It is quite a large spot on the river and is grassed which was handy as quite a bit of rain had come down.

I strolled over to the pub to have a beer to commemorate the end of the trip and check out the old pub. As I have been late to this lockdown party I had not got use to it and did not wear a mask into the pub. The unfriendly barman scolded me. I think lockdown causes people to be very unfriendly. So I had the one beer and left.

The weather was foul as a big wind had been blowing that day. At least it was mostly a tail wind. So I finished reading my book that night and had a nice dinner. Next morning after breakfast I headed for home. The wind only got bigger but it was a tail wind. I had sleet/snow coming toward Lithgow. I stopped for lunch at a rest stop near there.

I got home about 3 or 3.30pm. It was certainly good to get home and see Lin and Bec and give them a big cuddle. Back to all the comforts and great cooking, not to bad eh! So here ends the trip. It as an epic trip in many ways. There was the ruggedness of the Aussie outback, great gorges and natural pools, lava tubes and being looked after greatly by the Good Lord through the circumstances of the trip, such as the rims needing replacement and being able to source replacements and heading in the direction of Cairns anyway to get them, travelling 900km with no spare in the process of it. I did the Savannah Way, TICK, and enjoyed it for the most part, except for corrugations doing my head in. So I have been home only two days and already I am thinking about where I want to go next. I have asked Linda where she wants to go but she hasn’t answered yet, apart from, Ï don’t know”. I think that for the rest of this year and maybe quite a bit longer that we may only do short trips, like two weeks or so as Linda’s parent will need a lot of care. As far as big trips go Linda and I definitely want to return to WA and to the NT (not in the same trip necessarily). Then there is Cape York which I have not been to yet. A lot to look forward to. Well, until next time God bless, keep safe, and happy travels!