Menindee to Mungo National Park


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Oceania » Australia » New South Wales
April 4th 2022
Published: April 4th 2022
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This morning we packed the car for the second last time before we pack up for the big drive home on Wednesday. First stop, the General Store to buy another cask of water and some food in case we need it for lunch. Food and water sorted we popped along to Menindee Auto Repairs to see if we might be able to organise a replacement bolt for the LED strip light that is currently gaffer taped on at one end. The helpful mechanic engineered a bolt for us (he cut it shorter!), fitted it and checked that the other bolt is nice and tight and provided us with the sage advice that the tightness of the bolts should be checked periodically because dirt road driving will loosen the nuts!! All that for $10.00.

We set off out of Menindee on the Pooncarie Road knowing that it was not going to be a smooth drive! Blimey, the first few kilometres are sealed … sort of. Yes, it was sealed at one time, but at the moment there are more holes in the bitumen than there is actual bitumen so that was pretty bumpy! And then we hit the roadworks. It’s 164 kilometres from Menindee to Pooncarie and currently they are working on a $25 million, three year project to seal a 70 kilometre stretch of the road. The thing is they seem to be working on nearly all of that 70 kilometres all at the same time, so we endured road works for about half of the journey to Pooncarie. Great fun tootling along at 60km/hour just after the water truck has damped down the temporary side track.

When we reached the border between the Central Darling Shire and the Wentworth Shire there was an obvious demarcation of the road surface. As we departed the Central Darling Shire we left the unsealed road behind us and found ourselves cruising along on lovely, smooth, dust-free bitumen. Which was great while it lasted, but it didn’t get us all the way into Pooncarie! Hopefully the Wentworth Shire has plans to upgrade this final section so that ALL of the road between Pooncarie and Menindee will be an all-weather proposition.

When we reached Pooncarie we found a sleepy little town on the bank of the Darling River which, like several other towns on The Darling River Run, used to be a thriving inland port. Our first stop was at the public toilets. All that bouncing along on unsealed roads does take its toll on the bladder! The four of us had just finished when a busload of OAPs pulled up and descended on the facilities. Wow! What good timing.

There was an ‘Open 6 Days’ sign for a café down by the river where the Old Wharf used to be. Hmmn, it seems Monday is the one day of the week that the café is not open! So, we set off for a bit of a walk around town to stretch our legs. Gee, there’s not much in Pooncarie. The claim to fame that impressed us the most was the memorial about the bitumen reaching Pooncarie. I’m not surprised they were excited. The design and construction was carried out by staff of the Wentworth Shire Council and took place between 1960 and, wait for it, 1993!! That’s 33 years to seal about 100 kilometres of road. OMG, that’s an average of three kilometres of bitumen being laid per year??!! Most exciting for them though, was that Slim Dusty came to town to help the Shire President open the road AND he recorded a song about it.

After our exploration of the town we finished at the Pitstop Café where we had fresh salad sandwiches made for us. We are really trying to spend money in these little towns. There are so few businesses left in these towns to support the tourists that we feel an obligation to help them out and help future travellers out. The outback will be even more difficult to navigate without these little shops that sell food and drink and a little bit of everything else for people who are passing through. We ate in the picnic shelter beside the bitumen memorial and felt obliged to download Slim’s song to listen to it while we ate. It wasn’t a chart topper.

We topped up the tanks again, just to be sure we had plenty of fuel and then enjoyed travelling another 21 kilometres on bitumen before turning onto Top Hut Road for another 60 kilometres of dirt road driving on our way to Mungo National Park. We decided to drive into the park via the former Zanci Homestead which was a soldier settlement block that formed part of Gol Gol Station. The ruins of the stables and the dugout were very picturesque. And … we were just finishing up taking all the photos we wanted when the busload of OAPs pulled up again and old people (really old people!) started swarming all over it. Good timing again!

We didn’t grab a photo of the shearing shed on our way past because other tourists had parked right in front of it!!! Why do people have to park so close to everything?!! Hopefully we can get back around there tomorrow sometime for a photograph sans vehicle.

Our next stop was at the Visitor Centre to find out if the Mungo Track is open. If it’s open we will have a very full day tomorrow trying to fit in all of the walking and driving tracks. We had just walked into the centre when a woman blew in with a full head of steam demanding to know why the road past Red Top Lookout is closed. ‘We’ve driven hundreds of kilometres to arrive four hours before the sunset tour so that we can drive the circuit of the park, why doesn’t the website say it’s closed?’ The poor staff member on duty patiently advised that it IS notified on the website, but this woman wasn’t having any of it and continued to berate the staff member. At least we now knew that we wouldn’t have to try to fit in the 70 kilometre loop before our sunset tour tomorrow night. We can have a more relaxed couple of days.

Back outside we found the payment envelopes and filled out our details. We paid cash for a couple of things earlier in the day so we had some small notes to pay for two days in the national park. Cathy checked the website and, yes, it does say that the Mungo Track is undergoing work BUT it’s not up front and obvious on the website, you really have to hunt it out. Unfortunate, but probably not the fault of the staff in the visitor centre. You can just about guarantee that it’s down to someone who works for the NSW Department of Environment and Heritage, rather than one of the staff out here!!

We really don’t know how angry woman thought they were going to ‘do’ Mungo NP in just a few hours. They had allowed four hours to drive the circuit, but it’s 70 kilometres of unsealed road with eight points of interest along the route so, at two o’clock in the afternoon – even if they had been able to continue the circuit - they were going to struggle to be back at Mungo Lodge by 4.30pm for the Sunset Tour? Anyhow, her final word was that they’d cancelled their tour and they were leaving rather than sit around with the flies for company for the next four hours!

We drove just out of the park to check in at Mungo Lodge, where we will be staying for the next two nights. We ordered our meals for tonight and then retreated to our beautiful rooms to chill out for a bit. There’s no point getting all het up about what happens in the outback. You just have to accept that things out here operate differently from in the city! It’s a harsh environment and it’s a long way from everywhere. It can take nearly twice as long to get where you want to go. Roads deteriorate and supplies don’t get delivered, you just have to roll with it.



Steps for the day: 6,889 (4.74kms)


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