I recently won an auction on Ebay for a Windrider 10 kayak based trimaran sailing vessel. The pickup was in Albury which is a city on the Murray River on the western side of the Snowy Mountains in south eastern NSW.
On Thursday night just after midnight we hit the road. It was one of those perfect moonlit, still nights and the roo's were out in force, we saw 200 roo's in the first 300km and had to brake hard to avoid collision at least 40 times. The roo's were really thick between Broken Hill and Menindee in particular. Our plan was to hit the dirt between Menindee and Ivanhoe for 200km and then run down the Cobb Highway to Hay, then to Deniliquin, turning more Easterly to Albury. All up a journey of 850km. The driving conditions were pretty much perfect with very little traffic on the roads, we covered over 300km from Menindee to half way between Ivanhoe and Hay without seeing a single vehicle.
Driving into the sunrise approaching Hay was a bit tricky but once the sun got up off the horizon it was smooth sailing. We stopped for fuel and a late breakfast in Deniliquin which is a nice town and signals the end of the monotony of the Hay Plain which is a vast flat treeless and featureless expanse of essentially nothing. A tip for traveling this vast open country is to be prepared, carry spares, tools, plenty of water, food, extra fuel, recovery equipment, two spare wheels and ideally have a UHF radio installed in the vehicle. You could spend a lot of time stranded a long way from town in the event of a breakdown or a flooded track.
Not too far past Deniliquin, known to the locals as just "Deni" we came to Finley. What a beaut little town! Finley has it's own lake on the northern edge of town and it is just lovely. We stopped in at the Finley Lakeside Caravan Park where the staff were really friendly and helpful, the lady there told us the Rodeo was on that evening too, so our mind was easily made up. After arranging to return and securing a camp spot for a very reasonable $18 off we went to Albury to pickup the Windrider 10.
Albury has certainly grown since I was last there in the late 80's. The traffic was fairly heavy and lots of people everywhere, particularly in the CBD. We popped into the Albury Ray's Outdoors store and grabbed some ratchet straps and extra fishing tackle. Arriving at Hume Lake which is 15km past Albury we met up with the Ebay seller Jack and purchased our neat little kayak trimaran. James had a swim in the lake while I strapped the trimaran to it's custom built trailer and then we hit the road again making a bee line back to Finley and the Rodeo.
The Finley Rodeo was a great show but after being on the road for over 1000km's and 17 hours including sightseeing and shopping we only stayed for the first half of the program. The MC was great, he kept up an informative and often humorous banter throughout the show and the bull riding was, as always, our favorite part of the turnout. There was quite a crowd there and people had obviously come from all over the district. Finley only has a population of around 2,000 people. We tried a bit of night fishing on the Finley Lake but the mozzies were a good enough reason to jump inside our mesh tent and just have a good yarn till we crashed out.
After our night camping at the Lakeside Caravan Park in Finley and a quick test sail on the lovely little lake in sadly unreliable wind we soon realised that it was getting to be a really hot day. So we packed everything up and hit the road with the idea of getting to the Menindee lakes where there would be more reliable steady breeze and the advantage of being very close to home. The driving that day was hard going with the temperature up around 40 degrees all day and also high relative humidity. James was a bit crook from heat stress and did it tough for the first couple of hundred KM's. I started stopping at every river and creek we crossed so we could cool off. The nicest spot was at a place called Booroorban. James felt much better after a half hour rest and a swim in the creek there.
The Landrover ran like a Swiss watch and effortlessly towed the small craft on it's custom trailer. I checked the load every 100km's or so and there were no nasty surprises. We got a few light showers on the dirt road between Ivanhoe and Menindee and I was glad we got across this 200km section without a big storm, when the gray clay section of this road gets properly wet it becomes impassable and the only real solution is to camp and wait for the road to dry out. Many Outback desert tracks and dirt roads are similar which is another good reason for being prepared when traveling in the remote outback. We got into Menindee around dusk and it was obvious there had been a lot of rain there. The Darling River at Menindee was even higher than it was during our recent camping and fishing trip before Christmas. We decided not to camp on the lakes with the threat of further storms and took a run for home instead. We got home around 10pm Saturday night and the day had been hot in Broken Hill too but the showers had followed us in and things were cooling off nicely. Over the whole trip I was averaging about 12.5 litres/100km fully loaded and towing which is fairly good fuel economy for the TD5 turbo diesel.
We're heading up to the Menindee Lakes tomorrow (Tuesday) for a bit of sailing, paddling and fishing for the day so I'll do a write up about the Windrider 10 once we have tested it out a bit.
