Well, as if the sunset wasn’t impressive enough, the sunrise turned out to be equally spectacular!
The third image is the one I alluded to in yesterday’s post. I have been casually referring to this as “blue gold black”. Seriously considering a large canvas print of this one. I would put this in the top 5 images of this trip.
We packed up camp and hit the road just before 9:00. It was already 28ºC and not looking like cooling down any time soon.
We headed west through Kinchega National Park on our way towards the Silver City Highway (which runs north-south between Broken Hill and Mildura).
It was while heading towards the Silver City Highway that Max started watching a movie on my laptop. 10 mins in, it died on him. After stopping briefly to look at it, and not being able to ascertain as to why it had stopped, I told him he’d have to entertain himself via other means and that I’d check it out once we reached Adelaide.
The plan was to head south down the Silver City Highway for about 14km, then turn right onto a dirt road which would basically take us in a straight line towards Adelaide via Burra. However, this was roughly (in more ways than one!) 300km of dirt, with not one single town in between.
And I, foolishly, didn’t think to top the car up prior to leaving the Menindee Lakes.
We could have made it.
We had enough fuel, if we included the 20 litres in a jerry can sitting on the roof of the car.
But Cath didn’t like the idea of running out somewhere before Burra, being on dirt, and potentially stranded miles from anywhere in what was now a 40ºC day. It later peaked at 44ºC (111ºF)!
We got about 40km down this road before we started to question whether we would have enough fuel to get us to Burra.
After stopping at one of the stations (Aussie for “really big farm”) along the way and being told that no, there was definitely NOTHING between here and Burra, we elected to return to the Silver City Highway and head south towards Mildura. At least that way, we knew we would find fuel at regular intervals.
So, what should have been a 6 hour day in the car turned into a 10 hour day because of the unexpected detour.
Ce la vie.
Tomorrow will be a day of last minute Christmas shopping, and hopefully a computer repair.
