Day 62: Bourke to Wellington, 420km

Following the Macquarie River and the Mitchell Highway reminded me about how the early explorers (Mitchell, Stuart etc) were all looking for the inland lake and giant river, like the equivalent to the Amazon, Mississippi, Ganges, Nile etc. It made sense because every other continent had such a river, all the rivers this side of the Great Dividing Range run west, they had seen the big rivers in the northwest of the country flow to the sea, and Flinders (who charted the southern coast of the country) said he never found the mouth of any big rivers. Below is one of the proposed maps of inland Australia. 

They weren't too far off - they called the area around the lake "The Dead Level" and it is pretty flat

They didn't realise, of course, that the southern half flowed in the Murray and out to sea, but they actually weren't as far off as you might think. The size and location of the inland lake is close to Lake Eyre, which is actually the 4th largest terminal lake in the world and does drain a large part of the country they were exploring. And it has filled up before, so technically they were right. They just didn't realise how hot (high evaporation) and dry the country was, such that Lake Eyre normally only contains half a billion tonnes of salt.

Things have really changed now that we are getting closer to Sydney. We have seen traffic lights, traffic, normal cars (sedans, not SUVs and utes), and the caravans have disappeared. Up until Bourke, 9 out of 10 vehicles we saw were either towing a caravan or were a campervan variant. And the pub we ate at tonight had fancy food, not just standard pub fare. And Wellington has an Asian restaurant, called "Asian Restaurant" and true to its name, it covers a lot of bases with its menu.

Nyngan (a stopover) was good to us. I had looked up the procedure for replacing lost number plates - I needed ID, had to download a pdf form and print it out etc, and it is registered in the company name, so it would have been very difficult. I noticed a Service NSW office in Nyngan and walked in to ask them. There were no customers, and the lady there filled out the form for me and handed me some new number plates. The hardware store across the road had the screws I needed and within a total of about half an hour I had new number plates on the car. 

The Big Bogan at Nyngan (on the Bogan River, in Bogan Shire)

The old Wellington Hospital, where we are staying tonight (now the Hermitage Hotel)

Another part of the old hospital hotel complex