Over the hills and far away

We didn't steal a pig but got away nicely at 8:50 and headed off towards the cloudy hills of Bungendore.  We speculated on where the weather would clear, with Frances saying Wagga and me reckoning Gundagai (as that is where I feel the terrain climbs up to the Monaro - see part 3 of the trip for confirmation of this).

As we got to the Hume we got a reminder that we were heading into National Party territory (or possibly a Mad Monk supporter had been allowed to head West).

I normally obfuscate number plates to preserve privacy, but in this case I don't really want to protect the twerp.

In fact Frances was about on the money and the threat of rain had dissipated by the Western side of Wagga.  Not too much further down the road – possibly just past Lockhart – the sky was nicely blue and the horizon horizon-tal.  Yes, we’d entered the land of mind boggling flat!

In such an area the main thing you expect is to find the sons of Clancy droving.
And so it was.

We were surprised at the number of calves in the mob.

At Jerilderie we filled up with diesel, marvelling at the size and number of trucks at the servo.

By the time I’d paid they’d all vanished.

We took a short cut from Conargo on a dry weather road straight to Wanganella.

This saved us about 40km and as the track had been graded I was able to rumble along at pretty close to highway speed (apart from slowing down for the many single lane cattle grids).  The reason the road looks so dark is that much of it seems to go through black soil, which explains why it becomes impassable when when.  There were next to no birds along the way, although Black Kite was common and became emergency reserve bird of the day.  I noticed that the grass was waving around quite a bit in the wind.

Getting to Wanganella we were impressed with the village sign.

I'll cover the Merino tomorrow!  We found we had to go the Post Office in the village to arrange for our campsite which was done very efficiently. So back to the site to erect our tent.  This was nearly a complete disaster as a gust of wind caught while unsecured and it was heading for Billabong Creek.

The bank is about 6m high and very steep:  the water looked sufficiently deep to cause a major issue if the tent had made it there.  Fortunately I caught it just before it got to the water.  Frances slipped over coming down the bank but didn’t damage herself  badly -as far as evident so far.

Much bad language later and the tent was erected and appeared stable.

So we headed off to find the site for White-backed Swallows.  This would have been easy had Telstra offered a reliable mobile service in the area (which would seem reasonable as we were on the major Cobb highway).  However by dint of luck we found the TSR we were looking for and entered to cruise around.  A sandbank was spotted and it had nest holes dug into it.

Within a couple of minutes Frances spotted a very odd looking hirundine flittering above!  Tick: another lifer – I hadn’t spent as long looking for this species as I had Ground Parrot but the Swallows are much less common. I didn't get a photo - in fact the only bird  not doing a wind-assisted Mach 2 was this Cormorant.

That was actually across the Highway in 8 Mile Creek.

On getting back to Wanganella we decided to have a look at the village.  It had nice community facilities but the houses didn’t look too flash.  They did have a very extensive War Memorial, which is already in the Register.

There were a lot of birds around the campground with numbers of Brown Treecreepers and a circling flock of 50+ Woodswallows (a mixture of White-browed and Dusky) being notable.  The White-backed Swallow was obviously bird of the day with Blue-faced Honeyeater and a single Pied Butcherbird being contenders if they had been needed.

A nice meal was provided by Frances using the facilities at the campground.  As darkness fell so did the wind (fortunately).  We went and sat in the camp kitchen with better lights and decor ...

.. than the tent (and power for my computer (but still no reliable mobile signal).