Across Australia, Part Three: Days 7-11, 19-22 September
Across Australia: Only two letters and a sarky Postmaster General in Orroroo, plus pet threats; farewell to the Queen at the Palace, Broken Hill; bureaucratic autocracy and the herdsman-barista at Little Topar; a ray of gluten-free sunshine at Emmdale Roadhouse; a culinary snob concedes in Cobar; biblical rain in Nevertire and Coonabarabran; down by the river in artsy Goondiwindi; destination Brisbane – is it better to travel hopefully than to arrive?
So, here at last is my no-doubt eagerly awaited third and final post on our first-ever (and quite likely last-ever) drive across the grand continent of Australia, from Perth, WA to Brisbane, QLD. For Part One, click here; for Part Two, click here.)
DAY 7: Port Augusta to Broken Hill (412km)
Though I usually take the first driving shift, for no reason at all I suggested Roy start this morning. It must have been a premonition: in addition to a wiggly start out of Port Augusta across the bridge roadworks, driving side by side with massive road trains in narrowed lanes, you’re soon traversing the hills and curves of the Flinders Ranges.
Orroroo coffee stop
An hour’s drive from Port Augusta is Orroroo, which lays claims to having the widest main street in Australia – so wide that the median strip has a shady park. It’s also notable for being the crossroads of the main routes from Sydney to Perth (East to West) and Adelaide to Darwin (North to South).
Things to see in Orroroo include animal sculptures, an early settler’s hut (c. 1870s), the Pekina Creek walking trail, the Post Office*, and the ruins of Pekina Station and Lookout.
*When asked to establish a Post Office in the town in 1880, Postmaster General Todd is supposed to have observed: “Dear me! There are only two letters in Orroroo. What do you want a post office for?”
Roy parallel-parked the Prado-camper-trailer rig across half a dozen main street diagonal parking spaces; is that allowed? In case it’s not, we kept an eye out for the local Plod. Coffee and my biennial sausage roll at the one café that was open; the cuter-looking one closes on Mondays and Tuesdays, not unusual for small, touristy towns in WA, too.
Pet threat
Overheard from a woman calling her little dog to her in the famously wide median park: “Bugger, come here. Come here, Bugger! Council says you’ve got to come at first call, or they’ll take you to the pound.”
Thirty-eight kilometres from Orroroo, many times its size and just as arty-looking and pretty, is the relatively unheralded Peterborough. What it may lack is animal sculptures, and perhaps someone’s daughter working at the South Australian tourism authority.
We stopped for fuel at Yunta. It’s just that – a fuel stop. A sign warns of no further fuel for the next 200km. It’s true: there was none available at Cockburn.
Broken Hill
Did you know that the BHP in mining giant BHP Billiton stands for Broken Hill Proprietary? Incorporated in 1885, BHP’s history began in a silver, lead and zinc mine right here in Broken Hill.
An important city from the late 1800s to the early decades of the 20th century, Broken Hill is apparently doing well, despite the plethora of closed shops on its main street.
According to the receptionist at our hotel, once the pandemic lockdowns ended and citizens were allowed to travel within their own states, though not yet interstate or abroad, hotels like the Royal Exchange, the Palace, the Astra and others have been flourishing due to new interest from city-siders itching to go somewhere, anywhere. (We saw a similar phenomenon in WA.)
Review: Royal Exchange Hotel
The highly recommended Imperial Palace, Red Earth and Astra hotels had been fully booked ten days ago, when we were making our bookings. In fact, the Royal Exchange was perfect for us. Our spacious and elegantly furnished Deluxe Double Room ($180) had a big en-suite complete with deep, old-fashioned tub. (You’ve come a long way from Cocklebiddy, baby.)
Several recommended restaurants mentioned by the receptionist at Royal Exchange were within walking distance: The Astra, The Barrier Social Democratic Club and the Palace were just three of them. We’d definitely need to book for dinner at the Palace, she said, as it’s famous for having been used used in the filming of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.
Palace Hotel
So, having parked the Prado and camper trailer in the nearby civic parking lot and ferried what we needed into the hotel, we strolled the couple of hundred metres to the Palace.
Roy had his eye on a cerise-sequinned beret in the Palace’s souvenir shop, but I managed to gently distract him.
We had a rare afternoon drink in the Palace’s Sidebar, followed by a gentle stroll up and down the main drag (pun intended). It’s called Argent Street, along with other road names like Oxide and Sulphite, reflecting the town’s mining history.
Later, after a long soak in the deep tub of our olde-worlde and stylish en-suite at the Royal Exchange – aah! I do miss a bath! – it was back into the Sidebar for a G&T before dinner. The atmospheric interiors are all black-and-white tiles, lofty ceilings, crenellated mouldings, original Art Deco fixtures… and the ubiquitous gaudy wrap-around murals of Outback scenery.
Dinner at the Palace
After half-a-dozen oysters ($18), Roy had the porterhouse ($35) with salad; I ordered grilled barramundi with steamed sorrel potatoes and zucchini ($36); and both were very good. Just then, the swelling tones of church organ pipes and choral song from Westminster Abbey, screened live on the large TV on the bar stage, called us to watch the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.
For anyone who might not know it, Australia is not just part of the Commonwealth of Nations: it’s actually ruled by the British Monarch of the day, if only constitutionally. Oz’s new PM has said this is not the time to debate the Republican question. And of course it’s not; not when King Charles III is slated for a Royal Visit in 2024!
On a more practical note, when you look at the appalling *embarrassment of politicians (though they may arguably be no worse than those of many other countries), it’s hard to imagine how they would find a suitable President to head a future Republic of Australia.
*embarrassment: used here as a collective noun
DAY 8: Broken Hill to Cobar (458 km)
We’re still on the A32, the Barrier Highway, with nothing between Broken Hill and Cobar… except for Willcannia (after 200km), a small town that heartily annoyed me because the service station where we stopped for fuel didn’t have a toilet.
Fortunately, I’d already pulled over earlier at Little Topar Roadhouse for an unsanctioned pee-stop – even though we hadn’t covered much ground yet and I could hear Roy’s eyes rolling.
Behind the lavatorial outhouses at the back of Little Topar were these wonderfully photogenic animals, all of which he had raised from young, said the old man in a leather bush-hat and black eye-patch who made our coffees. (As he clearly didn’t like the sound of almond milk, I don’t think he’d appreciate being called a barista; neither did I think he’d regard being photographed for this blog as an honour.)
In answer to my questioning, he said: No, he’s not allowed to milk his beasts; raw milk is forbidden. Nor may he slaughter* them; that has to be done through a government agency. He’s not allowed chickens, either; only stamped eggs may be sold, or, indeed, eaten. Posing as health and safety regulation, this just sounds wrong to me. We’re in the middle of f**ing nowhere, after all. Little Topar roadhouse was for sale, and I wasn’t surprised. If I’m this annoyed, can you imagine how pissed off he must be?
*That said, it’s very hard to imagine our barista-herdsman actually wanting to slaughter any of his respectively woolly and furry family.
Between the toilet-shy Willcannia and our destination today, Cobar, is another ray of sunshine in the form of Emmdale Roadhouse. Offering a surprising variety of lactose-free, almond and soy milk, it had a sign saying: “Life is too short for bad coffee” – and this truly was good coffee.
In such a small, out of the way kind of place, it would have been rude to ignore another sign thoughtfully advertising gluten-free muffins. That said, separate signs offered a variety of whisky and other hard tack, which I didn’t follow up on.
Cobar
Cobar is an Outback mining town in NSW, as this hoarding faithfully represents:
The huge Great Western Hotel (below), built in 1898, is said to have the longest cast-iron and timber verandah and balcony in Australia. Imagine how many miners must have graced it with their presence. (Not to mention darkened its doors.)
Apparently, Cobar is a popular stop for holiday travellers in wintertime. That would explain the unlikely existence of Gumnut, a thriving and upmarket gift shop with an attractive courtyard café that brews up up a good flat white. (Extra shot, extra hot, two sweeteners.)
Cobar Caravan Park
At the time of booking, all that was available at Cobar Caravan Park was a fairly dreary Budget Double Room cabin. (For me as a Genius Level 3 member, it was just $127 from booking.com.) The new cabins to the rear of the park look, and no doubt are, quite a lot better. As for the campsite, it was the scene of much walking of small dogs, and it looked fine.
DAY 9: Cobar to Coonabarabran (390km)
Following our shortest-route-from-A-to-B plan, we took the Oxley Highway to Coonabarabran via Nevertire, Warren and Gilgandra. This was our one rainy day – and it truly poured for hours and hours, making driving challenging.
Nevertire, a rural village located at the junction of Mitchell and Oxley Highway, is described as “a typical little one-pub railway town” with a dozen houses, which exists for grain collection. Spotting the XXXX sign on a building, I requested the driver to pull over immediately. If Nevertire was a one-pub town, this had to be that pub.
Having been all but destroyed by a mini-cyclone a few years ago, the pub has been rebuilt with all the mod cons. Here it before the cyclone (left), and after rebuilding (right).
It was currently being managed by a couple from the UK. They explained that this work counted towards the time they were required to work in a rural environment in terms of their visa application.
He was enjoying it, he said: Truckers who stopped there had travelled throughout Australia, and were giving him invaluable advice on where to go, what to see and what to avoid.
She warned us to check with the road travel authorities about possible flooding ahead. There’d been so much rain that the rivers were high and rising… and it was raining really hard right now.
That was good advice. Parts of the road were flooded, but not yet impassable, and I was glad it was Roy who was driving.
Coonabarabran (Coona)
In such weather, we were not going to be able to appreciate what Coona is most famous for: star-gazing. Thanks to its pristine air, high altitude (505m) and low humidity, Coona is the star-gazing capital of Australia, and several observatories have been established in the area.
We weren’t going to be appreciating anything about Coona, to be honest. All we were really interested in was getting out of the wet and into the dry.
It was too early to check into our accommodation at Acacia Lodge (a comfortable Deluxe Double Room with balcony, $159 on booking.com; recommended). Fortunately it was lunchtime: and the big Golden Sea Dragon directly over the road came highly rated on TripAdvisor.
I should explain here, perhaps not for the first time, that it’s extremely difficult to get Roy into a Chinese restaurant. Over decades of doing business in China, Taiwan, Japan and other Asian countries, he has been treated to the best of the best in Asian cuisine. As a result of countless banquets featuring rare ghost crabs, soft shell crabs, suckling pigs and the like, he’s become a dreadful culinary snob.
But now there was no getting around it: we were destined to have a Chinese lunch in a big, glossy restaurant in deepest, darkest New South Wales. In fact, the food was excellent, washed down with jasmine tea and presided by a friendly Cantonese matriarch who wanted to know all about our journey, and particularly our children and grandchildren.
My crab and sweetcorn soup and Roy’s hot and sour soup would have been quite enough for lunch; but of course we over-ordered, and had to tapau (take away) much of the barbecued pork omelette and hot-plate tiger prawns with ginger.
(Dinner at the Acacia Motor Lodge was good, too. But I made no notes, took no photos, and for once have no memory of what we ate there.)
DAY 10: Coonabarabran to Goondiwindi (Gundy), 344km
From Coona, it’s about an hour to The Pilliga, which is how Pilliga National Park or Pilliga Forest is referred to. From there, about 50 minutes to Narrabri; another hour to Moree; and another 1.5 hours to Goondiwindi.
It’s pronounced Gun-da-windy, according to the local couple who were having dinner at the Acacia Motel in Coonabarabran last night. (Her actual words: “My mother was English, and she pronounced it ‘Goon-da-win-di’. Wrongly, apparently.) We soon discovered that everyone calls the town Gundy.
Victoria Hotel, Goondiwindi
The Victoria Hotel boasts early colonial Victorian architecture, says the tourism blurb, and has one of a dozen pubs in the town. I count myself a lucky woman if I can coax Roy into one pub, let alone 12.
Having delicately sipped his way through the smallest size of beer available (a schooner?), Roy mildly agreed to come back for dinner. That was a good thing, especially as just about everywhere else was shut: today, 22 September, was a nation-wide public holiday to mourn the death of Her Majesty, QEII.
The Vic was packed that night, they were understaffed (understandably), and we were warned we’d have to wait 45 minutes to an hour for our steak dinners. We waited for an hour, and then the food arrived so cold that it had to be sent back to the kitchen. Ten out of ten to the indefatigable manager Ben Harrison, who insisted on refunding us on the spot when he heard what had happened. (That must be a first for us in Australia.) Because of that, I would gladly go back.
Down by the river
As the weather had cleared, I was itching to explore what looked like one of the more interesting towns on our route. (To be fair, Coona might have had a lot to offer in different circumstances. Though perhaps not.)
So I set off in the direction of the Macintyre River, and here’s a selection of what I saw both on my 6km walk that afternoon, and on my run along the same route early the next morning.
Review: Pioneer Motel Goondiwindi
There is plenty of accommodation in Goondiwindi, but we were well pleased with the Pioneer. Our Deluxe Queen Room ($132 on booking.com) had everything we required, and the friendly owner couple told us that whatever else we fancied in the way of toasters, crockery, cutlery and so on was available at Reception. What was more, we arrived a good hour before their 1.30pm check-in time, but they welcomed us anyway and allocated us a room right next to an extra-long parking space.*
*I may not have mentioned one small, worrying niggle that accompanied us all the way across Oz: that our accommodation wouldn’t have suitable parking for the Prado with camper-trailer attached. (In fact, we should have let each place know about this in advance.) Luckily, it all worked out fine.
DAY 11: Goondiwindi to Brisbane (354km)
Did I feel a sense of relief on this, the last day of our journey, as we made our ever-slower way, first through the busy city of Toowoomba and on to the motorway-heavy approach to our destination? No, I did not.
Though I’ve always described myself as a city-dweller at heart, happiest when able to walk to nearby stores, pubs and restaurants, there was something about this unlikely ten-day Outback journey that deeply appealed to something in me.
In fact, I felt I could have carried on – maybe not north to Cairns again, as we did last year (click here for Part 8 of that huge story), but instead right, to… well, to wherever the road might lead.
Next up? Well, my newly re-established editor role at Expat Living magazine will take me to Singapore next week, so I might have something to say about that wonderful city where Roy and I lived and worked for almost 16 years. My husband will be home alone in Perth, so let’s hope he behaves himself.
It is better to travel hopefully than to arrive.
