TUESDAY 2 OCTOBER   TIBOOBURRA TO WHITE CLIFFS   260kms

In the morning, the rain appeared to have stopped.

The motel breakfast that we’d ordered last night, was delivered to our unit. I was feeling pampered.

When we went out to Truck we were embarrassed to find big piles of red mud that had dropped from underneath Truck as it dried out a bit. It made quite a mess on the clean cement forecourt of the motel! We got going as quickly as we could.

We were relieved to find that the road south was open.

It had dried enough for the main wheel tracks to be packed down and not too slippery – but the sides were still sloppy and in places showed where some of the rigs that had travelled it in the rain, had slid off.

The Silver City Highway, south of Tibooburra

We detoured from the Silver City Highway to have a quick look at Milparinka – these days mostly ruins of what were some quite substantial stone buildings. This was the centre of a gold rush and mining area in the 1880’s. I was pleased to see some attempts to restore and preserve some of the old buildings.

Restoration of building at Milparinka

This old Milparinka building was in definite need of restoration

We drove a bit beyond the former township, to Depot Glen, where the explorer Sturt camped by a waterhole in 1844/45. The grave of one of the expedition members, Poole, was there too.

Some 70kms south of Milparinka, we took the road to the east, towards White Cliffs.

This was definitely a minor, back road, but did not seem as badly affected by rain as the road we’d been on. However, there were still some muddy sections, especially where we crossed creek beds – mostly dry, and in one of these a small “pretend” 4WD was stuck. The occupants clearly had no idea what they were doing. They were just out for a drive!

John towed them out of the muck, and then we resumed on our way to White Cliffs. They kept going the way they had been headed and we hoped they’d stick to roads they could manage.

We set up the tent again, in the White Cliffs caravan park. This had a dirt and gravel surface – one does not expect grass in a place as arid as this. There were some shelters scattered about and we set up by one of these – just to make life a bit easier if the rain came back.

John spent some time scraping dried mud from the under parts of Truck. Despite the generous dollops we’d left at the motel this morning, there was still plenty more attached to Truck. It had been carrying a lot of extra weight!

At White Cliffs – a chunk of dried-on mud from the under parts of Truck

The night was quite cold, so we did not stay up very long after dinner.