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Published: June 11th 2010
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It's about 400 or so kilometres from Narrabri to Bourke - a long drive to do in a day, in a motor home. The countryside is flat, and between Narrabri and Wee Waa there are cotton farms as far as the eye can see. The cotton has recently been harvested so bare paddocks were edged in large bales of cotton, and the road for kilometres was edged with puffs of cotton. It's something of a controversial crop to have here in mostly water-starved Australia, although we were told today that cotton farmers can't take water from the rivers here unless it's above a certain flood height..
Once we'd left the cotton area, it was mostly wheat, sheep or beef cattle. We didn't see much in the way of wildlife apart from several emus and two foxes on the road, one dead, one very much alive - bright red and no doubt a threat to the sheep which were beyond the fences.
We drove through Walgett and then on the Brewarrina - called Bre by the locals. Here there are a series 40,000 year old Aboriginal fishtraps on the Barwon River. This elaborate network of rock weirs and pools stretches
The very straight flat road to Bourke
but with very long grass, thanks to floods a few months ago for around half a kilometre along the Barwon Riverbed as built by the Ngemba people to catch fish as they swam upstream and are still luring fish today.
We finally arrived in Bourke (on the Darling River) and set up in Kidman Camp, a caravan park just out of town for a couple of nights - there's quite a lot to see at Bourke. This morning, after doing a big wash and hanging it on the caravan park line and our little rotary, we drove out to the Back o'Bourke Centre. It was very good, as these usually are with audio/visual displays of the history of the town and many photos and films from the old days.
It's amazing the famous people who've lived in Bourke. Henry Lawson (remember our Gulgong stay?) was here in the late 1800's - sent by his employers, the Bulletin newspaper, to get him out of the pubs of Sydney. Little did they know in those days there were 27 hotels in Bourke! He became quite vocal in the fight for the shearers union and a lot of his writings and poetry were penned here. Harry (Breaker) Morant lived here before his fatal
Under the shade of a Coolibah tree
These beautiful trees are everywhere in Bourke - blue/grey leaves. trip to the Boer war, Nancy Bird Walton flew for the Flying Dr. here and Charles Kingsford Smith landed here on his flight from England in 1922. Fred Hollows was around Bourke, doing his great works on the eyes of aborigines and is buried in Bourke Cemetery.
At the end of the nineteenth and early in the twentieth century, the Darling River was busy with paddlesteamers carrying wool bales up and down the river - Port Bourke was one of the busiest inland ports in it's day when there were 15 million sheep in the area - now there are 60,000 due to drought. It's a river that's flooded and all but dried up regularly over the years.
This afternoon we went on the Darling on PV Jandra - a paddleboat that is a replica of an old boat of the same name, a pretty trip, the river is narrow and lined with big river red gums. The Darling flooded twice earlier this year - it's quite amazing how high the river came and the area was several SydHarbs in width, as they say.
Tonight there is a bbq for the caravan park people, together with entertainment
- possibly a bush poet. We have to decided whether we'll brave the cool night to sit outside by their fire. Tomorrow we'll head north into Queensland - first stop Cunnumulla.
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