New South Wales

Once again, unless otherwise noted, weather has been sunny and warm, 30-35 C in the afternoon, and comfortably cool at night.  Folks tell me this is the warmest April anyone can remember.  Even though I'm now closer to the equator than Phoenix, it's usually not this warm so late in the season.

Punctures have been too numerous to mention.  Suffice it to say 3 of my 4 inner tubes are full of patches.  I just bought another spare: The only one they had in Gilgandra was "thorn resistant", about twice the weight of my others.  I check my tires for thorns and leaks every morning before hitting the road, but still have some flats on the road.

The next stop after Forbes was Eugowra, a pleasant village in which I stayed in 2015.  There was a car and motorbike show scheduled at the showgrounds, where the campground is, as well as the "Country Fair", so I was expecting a big mob.  It turned out hardly anyone showed up, and most of them were gone by the time I got there, so it was a quiet evening.  There was even an old rusty table at my campsite.

Eugowra Campsite

Eugowra Sunset

Foothills of the Dividing Range

The next morning, Sunday, I found the cafe closed, but heard a voice calling.  Mike is closed on Sundays, but made me breakfast anyway, and wouldn't let me pay for it.  He remembered me from 2015.  His family has been in the area for about 200 years.  Some visitors from Wisconsin had dropped off his Spotted Cow souvenir.  (That's a popular local beer.)

At the Gentle Cow Cafe

Souvenir From Wisconsin

The Gentle Cow Cafe in Eugowra

Murals are very popular in these little towns, and Eugowra has several.

    

    

Eugowra Mural

The ride to Parkes makes it clear you're not in the plains any more.  The town itself has some serious hills, atop one of which is my caravan park.  I had a nice grassy campsite right next to the barbecue shelter.  That evening a family of six arrived by car and camped next to me in three tiny tents.  They were the quietest family I've encountered so far.  They were on a marathon drive from Queensland to a funeral south of Parkes.

Parkes Campsite

Soil salinization is a major problem in Austraila, where clearing of trees for farming has allowed the water table to rise, bring salt to the surface.  Some efforts are being made to control it by planting trees and bushes.

Between Parks and Yeoval

There are a few more hills between Parkes and the little village of Yeoval, my next stop.

Scenery En Route to Yeoval

While I was exploring Yeoval in 2004, a local chased me down and I met Alf and Sharon Cantrell. I was leaving the next day, but they invited me to have breakfast with them and their daughter Jessica the next morning. I contacted them again in 2015, and stayed with them for a couple days. Alf is one of the country's experts on Banjo Paterson, Australia's most famous poet, who lived in Yeoval as a child. Alf and Sharon run the Banjo Patterson Museum in town, with a huge collection of books and other stuff related to the poet (among other things). They drive buses part time to help finance the operation, and also volunteer for all sorts of other activities around town. I'm not sure Yeoval could function without them.

Shortly after I arrived at the Museum, another cyclist arrived. Graham was from Perth, though he didn't ride all the way from there. He stopped in at the museum because Alf and Sharon also manage the campground at the showgrounds where he wanted to stay.

Graham in Yeoval

Alf had an errand to do the afternoon I arrived, so I rode along with him back to Parkes on the road I had just ridden, to pick up hay for their 12 horses. They've had a very long drought, so there's no grass at all for them to eat. Alf, of course, has a ute, their version of a pickup truck. The back is sort of a flatbed, with low sides. Both sides, as well as the tailgate, can be folded down, and the bed is wider than a typical pickup.They look extremely practical, so I don't know why American farmers don't use them. In any case, a big round bale of hay was loaded in back and strapped down. Alf doesn't have a fork lift at home, but has a method of "gravity assisted" unloading, with which I helped in the morning.

The Ubiquitous Ute

The next day, after Sharon's morning school bus run, we set out in the ute to visit Goobang National Park. It's way up a bad gravel road, so I never would have ridden my bike up there. Alf claims on a clear day he can see the Indian Ocean from the overlook. (Actually, he claims he can see WHALES in the Indian Ocean.) Alas, it was hazy when we were there.

Goobang National Park Overlook

With Sharon and Alf

Later that day, we drove over to visit the famous radio telescope near Parkes. It's 64 meters in diameter, was completed in the early 60's, and supported the Apollo program. I'm curious how, in the early 60's, they did the calculations to control the altitude-elevation mount, as that requires some serious number crunching and I doubt the computers of the day were up to the task. (It turns out they built small model of the telescope, a mechanical computer!)

The Parkes Radio Telescope

The Banjo Paterson Museum

Sharon and Alf have a very friendly dog named Jack.  He's so friendly, in fact, that he was a complete failure as a sheep dog:  He wouldn't herd them, he wanted to make friends with them all. Fortunately, Sharon and Alf adopted him as a pet. He loves to leap into the back of the ute to go wherever Alf does, and is very unhappy when left behind. At one point, when the big bale of hay was in the ute, he jumped in only to find he didn't even have room to turn around, so I carried him over to the other side. I wouldn't try that with just any dog!

Sharon and Alf, with Jack

Alf and Sharon wouldn’t let me pay for anything during my visit, but when they weren’t looking I slipped a donation into the box at the museum. 

Alf was driving to Dubbo the next day to pick up a bus and offered me a ride. I didn't find it very pleasant staying in Dubbo last time, so I gladly accepted.(I know I'll never live it down, but so be it.) It's a pretty dreary ride through Dubbo's industrial wasteland to the north, but eventually I made it to the village of Mendooran. There's a free campground, a pub, a tiny store, and, of course, more murals.

Mendooran Mural

Mendooran Mural

Mendooran Mural

Mendooran Mural

Mendooran

Trucks in Australia seem to have a lot more wheels than we're used to seeing. I assumed that, because they're allowed on all the minor roads, that it was to spread out the load. I turns out, the allowed load for each wheel is about DOUBLE that allowed in Wisconsin. I'm amazed the roads are in as good a condition as they are. It must help not to have frost.

34 Wheels

I found a notice by the post office in Mendooran that someone had stolen 5 slabs of concrete from right in front of the pub. I turns out it was the old pub, which has been closed for years, but still.... You would think, unless they hauled them 500 km away, someone would eventually stop in at the other pub and give a clue.

Only in Australia!

The somewhat grumpy folks who were leasing the Royal Hotel in 2015 are gone, and the place is now apparently run by the owner's family. They were very friendly, offering free showers and WiFi.  When I asked the lady if I could wash my clothes somewhere, she insisted on putting them in the washer and hanging them for me. Later, I went back to borrow a bucket to find a puncture in an inner tube. Just as I started, her 4 young children returned from school, so all got a lesson in puncture repair. (Which will be handy, if they ride bikes around here!)

The Royal Hotel, Mendooran

Actual rain was in the forecast, so I decided to ride next to Gilgandra, a somewhat larger town, where it might be more pleasant to wait out the rain. (And update the blog at the library.) There were a couple steep climbs along the way, but I'll be soon leaving the hills behind once again.

Sure enough, about 7 PM a line of thunderstorms rolled through, though they didn't last long. I sat it out under a little roof by the barbecue at the caravan park.  Later that night, more thunderstorms went through. That's the first rain I've seen since Swan Hill, about 3 weeks ago. It wasn't a big rain, but the locals can't remember the last time they had even that much.  

Thunderstorms Approaching Gilgandra

It's supposed to clear up tomorrow, and the north winds should abate a bit. In a couple days, I'll have to ride 122 km to Walgett, and I REALLY  don't want to do that into a headwind.