Cobar

On Saturday the 29th April we left Broken Hill for Cobar. We had been to Broken Hill a few times before so we did not need to do any sightseeing. The trip was 450km so it was our biggest days drive on this trip. There is an alternative to pushing right through to Cobar and that is to stay at Wilcannia in a van park that is about 3km out of town which would be OK. But we wanted to push on through to give us an extra day in Cobar. I have never had a look at the mine or anything else there so that was on the agenda. It is amazing how many wild goats there are by the road between Broken Hill and Cobar. The must be millions. Fortunately they are not like sheep and they mostly do not go onto the road as you are approaching. They appear to have a degree more intelligence to know it wouldn’t be wise to run out in front of a vehicle. Otherwise you would have to crawl along at and very slow speed. Having said that I saw about a dozen dead all in one spot at the side of this road once. The van park in Cobar is a good one, good long sites which allows you to be hooked up on your last night. We set up camp and I did some blogging and barbecued dinner. I like to get outside when caravanning.

Next morning after a barbecued bacon & egg breakfast we took a drive around Cobar. Firstly went to the Newey Reserve which was the water supply for Cobar for a long time. No camping allowed there unfortunately.

Then it was onto the Fort Bourke Hill Lookout. This is an active copper and gold open cut mine. On the bottom level of the mine there is a massive tunnel which you can’t see because it is in shade. These huge trucks were taking their loads of processed fill down into the mine tunnel to back fill the tunnel as they had finished mining that spot.

We moved on to the Visitors Information Centre which housed the mining museum. It was quite good.

That completed the sightseeing. We fuelled up and picked up a few grocery items. Back to camp for a late lunch and hook up in readiness for our departure the next day. Then time for blogging and barbequing again. Another nice night.