THURSDAY 27 AUGUST     CHARLEVILLE TO NORTH BOURKE     450kms

We were away by 7am.

This was a route we’d driven several times before, through the semi-arid grazing and mulga country.

Refuelled at the usual place at the corner at Cunnamulla.

In an event typical of this benighted trip, we had another flat tyre, on the driver’s side rear – again – about 50kms south of Cunnamulla. That was the spare wheel we’d put on two days ago. We’d been carrying it as a spare, since it was repaired at Lightning Ridge. THAT repair didn’t last long!

Now we’d used both spares. It was not a nice feeling, to be going several hundred kms with no spare, through country where settlements were few and far between.

It was a relief to reach Kidmans Camp at North Bourke, mid afternoon, after stopping briefly beside the road to eat lunch, earlier.

Our site at Kidmans cost $26.

We unhitched, and John drove on into Bourke, to a tyre place. They found that the guy in Lightning Ridge had essentially wrecked the tyre, by carving off some of the edge beading! Why on earth would he have done that? John came back with a brand new tyre on the – solid – spare wheel. We mounted that on back of Truck, and put the split one on the van mounting. He’d fuelled up in town too.

Kidmans Camp was as lovely as always. They now had two swimming pools. I couldn’t get motivated to try either, but we went walking down the tracks to the Darling River. The river level was medium – had seen it much lower in other years.

We watched the tourist river boat return to dock from its afternoon cruise.

Lazed about for the rest of the day.

There was another wonderful inland sunset here.