Today’s journey would be 470kms. There are helpful signs on the exit from Cobar telling you that (for example) there is “no fuel for 254kms”, depending on which road you are taking. Make sure that you have enough before leaving civilization – you do not want to go “splutter, splutter, stop” on these roads and at these temperatures (nudging 40°C).

Driving distances out here are mathematical – you set the cruise control to 100kph (the limit is actually 110kph) and keep going along a mainly straight, unvarying road. Divide your distance by 100 and that’s when you’ll arrive, adding a little on for comfort breaks and lunch. It’s tiresomely predictable but I love it.

I was very surprised to drive past goats beside several 100 kms of road. I was not expecting goats in outback Australia. Some were inside a boundary fence but very many were just grazing beside the road itself. One or two, only one or two, along with several kangaroos, used the road as their final resting place, probably having fallen victim to one of the many Road Trains on the route. Every now and then we past emus, too, and happily no dead ones.

From Cobar there was a small settlement or two before we stopped in Wilcania on the Darling River. We’d covered 270kms, a little more than half the distance to Broken Hill. Here we found a shady table for lunch in the company of two Kookaburras. Cormorant-alikes were fishing in the river.

The town was approaching dead. Apparently there used to be a dock here for trading along the river but modernization took care of that.

There is absolutely nothing in the 195kms between Wilcania and Broken Hill, just road and outback. The closer we got to Broken Hill, the more sparse the vegetation became. This was the outback New South Wales that I was keen to see. Wonderful in a desolate kind of way.

Francine snapped entrance gates into distant properties that were probably approaching the size of Wales. You do not suffer from neighbour noise here. Heaven knows how they fence these vast expanses

We’d come across a couple of road work stretches where, in the UK, we’d have a sign saying something to the effect that there were no white lines. [I’ve seen our drivers  – take the lines away and they are completely disoriented.] Here, in Australia, the sign was more bemusing. “No lines, do not overtake unless safe”. Bloody hell! Surely that applies whether there are line or not, doesn’t it? The implication here is that if there are lines, you can overtake come what may. I don’t get it.

30 kms before Broken Hill a sign beside the road announced “Central Time Zone, subtract 30 minutes.” More Australian weird. Broken Hill is actually in NSW but, because it was tied to Adelaide via the railway and postal system, it is on Adelaide (Central) time, half an hour shifted from the rest of NSW. The clock in Busby II is now wrong.

After 6 hours of completely painless driving we pulled into Broken Hill itself. I’d used 2/3rds tank covering 470kms so, seeing a cheap fuel station, I topped up while I could. Then we went off in search of Coles supermarket for supplies.

I was hoping for a Coles roast chicken but, as I suspected, we were too late in the day and they’d sold out. We grabbed a quiche to supplement our cold meats and salad.

We are being brave, for us. We’ve booked  in to the Starview Primitive Campsite, run by the Broken Hill council. It has 15 pitches and a walk-in tent area. There is no ELH [Electric Hook-up] (so no aircon) but it does have a toilet and shower block (two of each I think). We are effectively off-grid. We’re hoping that the fridge will run on 12V charged by the on-board solar panel, now that we’ve sorted the switches out.

The entrance gate is electric and access code controlled. Francine had the code emailed to her on making the booking. We made our approach and stopped at the gate. Francine climbed out and went to enter the code. Magically the gate began swinging slowly open. We were in.

We’d booked pitch #7 which looked big enough to allow us to reposition the van for shade, should we need to. Arrival, with no ELH, simply required putting the van into “park”.

Now, where’s that beer? I’ve got four cold ones and I need every one of ‘em.

We left the Dubbo campsite at 08:45 and headed for a local Japanese Gardens within the botanic gardens area. There was water but unfortunately the water was full of absolutely enormous Koi Carp – that’s the Japanese for you – so dragonfly activity was very limited. Koi are devastating to dragonfly populations; we’ve witnessed it in France

We had much more success finding a bottle shop that must have been at least the size of our entire Waitrose store at home. We refilled the beer cupboard with an irresistible offer of 16 Balter XPAs for A$59 – that’s the equivalent of four free tins.

The route was more or less dead straight, often running beside a railway line. At one point I had to do a double take as I saw a car driving along the track. It seemed to be using its tyred wheels as propulsion against the rails but had bogeys keeping in on track. Very curious, if only there had been time for a photo. The heat was frequently causing a mirage to appear on the road surface, out of which opposing vehicles appeared. This was reminiscent of Namibia where we’d seen a very similar effect.

We stopped at a well appointed rest area beside the Bogan River in Nyngan. This was sheep shearing central, with museums to the art form. We’d driven past a “welcome to Bogan-shire” sign, or words to that effect. When we had hire a car in our 2017 visit to Francine’s brother, sis-in-law looked at our car, a GM, and called it a Boganmobile. It was a new term to us but clearly not entirely complementary. We’ll come back to this in a while.

The rest area beside the river looked dull at first until Francine disturbed a very attractive damselfly in the vegetation at the margins: it was the diminutive but delightful Ischnura aurora (Aurora Bluetail). I was very surprised when it was joined by an equally gaudy Xanthagrion erythroneurum (Red & Blue Damselfly). Very happy camper.

After another 120kms of almost dead straight road we entered Cobar after taking a detour to the Fort Burke viewpoint over the vast copper mine. One could write a complete diatribe on impossibly extensive open-cast mining raping Australia. Much of it is for coal, largely exported to China at what I bleieve is an astonishing two tons per second. I’ll leave it to your imagination. It’s quite inconceivable, really.

The Cobar campsite is very quiet with great, well spaced pitches, and orderly. We seem to have lucked out; we have what appears to be the only picnic table on site beneath a shade tree. I loved it.

The campsite was home to a good sized flock of Galahs, beautifully marked parrots in bright pink and grey. I asked a local lady why silly people were called Galahs in Australia when the birds were so attractive. She sniggered.

I went for broke. I asked why no hopers in Australia were referred to as Bogans. “Bogans are dickheads”, she said, sniggering again. She didn’t really answer the why, though.

I slid out the external gas grill again and we tucked in to rump steak with a leaf, tomato and avocado salad. This is sounding painfully healthy but at 37°C, what else do you want to cook? At least the humidity is low.

We’ve made an interesting discovery – well, interesting for a European camper, that is. The chemical toilet dump stations are generally not in the campsites but at designated points beside the road in towns. This one, the first we’d needed, was 100m up the road outside our Bingara campsite. I went to make use of it and luckily there was a local ahead of me giving some clues.

The first part of our tour follows a Maui Maui itinerary which suggested pausing at the Rocky Creek  glacial area just about 30kms outside of Bingara. This we did but I had to park early ‘cos Ms. Wimp didn’t like the look of the gravel road leading down to the area itself. A tumbling stream flowed past said glacial rocks and I found a few odos, together with a car and lady who was clearly less wimpy. The dragons were nothing spectacular.

We continued heading for Dubbo [curious name] via Coonibarabran [even more curious name]. The main part of this road was almost dead straight and relatively smooth so I risked, for the first time, setting the cruise control to 100kph.

We’ve developed a new speed rating. Based on the road surface I can set the cruise control to either 70 jiggles, 80 jiggles, 90 jiggles or 100 jiggles depending upon how smooth or not the road surface is. I have a passenger that can easily reach her jiggle limit if I get it wrong.

The road into Coonibarabran, part way to Dubbo, was lined with blackened trees, perhaps from the severe forest fires that NSW suffered in 2019. Nature is resilient, though; many of the tree trunks were covered in fresh green shoots.

In Connibarabran we found a shaded picnic table for lunch, dipping veggies into some hoummos. A gaggle of geese begrudged us every mouthful, occasionally tapping the meatal seats with their beaks to make sure we knew they were there.

On the road into Dubbo, the car began issuing bongs that I had not yet encountered. Nothing showed up on the vehicle control unit but Francine spotted a warning triangle on the satnav – it had decided to warn us of sharp bends in the road ahead.

Entering Dubbo, we tried a couple of stores to try and find a sink plug, ours not fitting. We bought two options, one of which looked like the right fit but didn’t stay in and the other being more like a travel universal plug which sort of works but isn’t completely watertight. Our sink may now be OK for modest amounts of washing up, though.

The Dubbo campsite was expecting us [hooray!] and we got a good flat hardstanding pitch right beside the kitchen area, should we need it. It was 39°C and we were able to sit beneath the shady veranda around the kitchen.

I tried to investigate the river which ran beside the campsite but the access was rubbish [steep bank] so there was no wildlife action.

I’d perhaps made the mistake of nodding an acknowledgement to a nearby fellow camper. As we sat down for a drink after failing at the river, he came and invited himself over to give us his life story. He’d been in Australia for 30 years but didn’t feel at home; he felt at home in the Congo where he’d been a missionary. He claimed to be fluent in one of the tribal languages of the Congo and also in French. Well, if missionary then weird, is all I can say.

We are trying to acclimatize ourselves for Broken Hill where we will not have an Electric Hook Up, so no aircon.

“Oh sod it, turn the air on, it’s 39 friggin’ degrees”.

Today was to be a trek of about 360 kms. We hit the road at 09:30 after hitting Coles  a little before 09:00to stock the fridge and drinks cabinet.

I suddenly realized that Bingara is in NSW which is an hour ahead of Queensland, so we actually had an hour less than we originally thought we’d have to get there. Bloody Australian time zones can be tricky.

There’s a lookout in Toowoomba but the clouds were on the deck last night and this morning so the lookout was pointless. We just headed out.

We drove through some annoying rain en route, which was pleasantly rural, albeit a little jiggly, but with little in the way of traffic. You never drive a road with this little traffic at home. At frequent intervals we crossed “floodways” which are low points across the road accompanied by depth markers. Happily, though we’d had some rain, we had no floods.

We crossed into NSW at Texas [go figure]. The changed time zone will give us lighter evenings which have been a little odd.

Soaking up a little Ozzie rural culture en route, we stopped at a fuel station/rest stop at Gore [blink and you miss it]. The culture involved was a home made steak and kidney pie, which we shared for lunch. ‘T was very good. I’d asked for short black coffees but we got long black coffees. No matter.

At a hardware store in Warialda we tried to buy a sink plug but this proved to be too small. Still no functioning sink.

Arriving in Bingara, the office at the campsite appeared closed so Francine rang the number. The lady was in the office – she’d forgotten to change the sign. It’s a pleasantly rural campsite.

Busby II has an outside BBQ (actually two gas rings) on which we cooked Roo Burgers. They were excellent, accompanied by some salad.

It was pouring with rain overnight and during the morning at our hosts’. I had trouble reversing up a wet, gravel-covered hump of a slope in a 3500kg Busby II. I apologized for gouging up the drive. On the next attempt I broke a branch off a shrub. I apologized for that, too. Busby II has no reversing camera and my mirror usage clearly lacked something. Maybe if the ground would just open up and swallow me …

I’d tried turning on the gas but discovered that the fridge doesn’t seem to work on gas and that the hot water system ONLY works on gas, not electricity. Bloody brilliant! Hot water not on electricity is OK ‘cos there’s always gas but if you go off grid without an Electric Hook Up I presume you have no fridge. How is this sensible in Australia? I tried phoning the on-road helpline but that just rings waiting for an operative. Why am I not surprised?

With wi-fi “at home” we investigated setting up a toll tag account but that was going to grab A$25 which we probably would not use so discounted that. There’s a number to call within 3 days to pay if you DO hit a toll so we’ll go with that but programmed the satnav to avoid tolls. There shouldn’t be many on our route through outback New South Wales and Victoria.

After my two embarrassments we eventually loaded the van, bad fond farewells, and set sail for Toowoomba some 90-minutes distant. There is a Toowoomba bypass which IS a toll road but we clambered off before the toll section.

Francine had booked the campsite and had a confirmation email but did they have any record of our booking? No! Brilliant again.Happily they weren’t full and we got a pitch. The campsite is best described as utilitarian – it’s not one you’d sit on for the fun of it.

We plugged in and the aircon came on. Great, we had power. We started flipping switches on for other facilities: water pump, hot water, lights, reading lights. Nothing came on – no water flowed, the toilet didn’t flush.

Clearly we had 240V ‘cos the aircon was working. Either a master fuse/circuit breaker was broken or a master switch wasn’t on. A helpful video showed it to be the latter; there was a master switch which we managed to locate and which proved to be off. Wouldn’t it have been nice if we’d been told or, better, if we’d been given the van with it on? We turned it to “on” and life became bmuch better.

This campsite was probably my best chance of odos on the road, being next to a series of ponds linked by a stream. We wandered off on an odo hunt. There had been heavy rain a day or two before and a bridge was strewn with aquatic vegetation. Happily the waters had now receded and the bridge waw usable again. I’d looked on iNaturalist before arriving and had a target species, the utterly delightful Gold-fronted Riverdamsel (Pseudagrion aureofrons). I could not believe my luck when I spotted one perching on a stick close to the bridge. I’d seen this species once before but not with such good access. I was a very happy camper.

We were having a pre-prandial when swarms of parrakeets began roosting in the trees on the campsite, chattering constantly. It was like a parrot murmuration. It that wasn’t enough, a stream of Fruit Bats began flying by the campsite. An unbroken stream of them passed for maybe 15 minutes. The numbers were incredible, there must have been 10s of thousands. A few broke away from the stream to fly over us, A lady on another pitch saw us staring up and asked if we were worried. “Not at all”, we said, “just in awe of the spectacle”. How friendly of her.

We debated doing dinner on the campsite communal area but it looked a bit busy so, being our usual unsociable selves we chose to do steak and salad in Busby II. Our rump steak was very good, tasty and tender.

Time to clear up. The bloody sink plug doesn’t fit. How v=can they g=ve us a van with a sink plug that doesn’t fit? Now we can’t wash up in Busby II. We’re saving the washing up to use the camp facilities in the morning.

Someone will not be getting a very favourable review.

In 2017 we had visited Australia for three weeks before flying over to New Zealand for the classic 4-week camper van tour. Our vehicle was a Mercedes Sprinter van conversion rented from Maui in Aukland. It was a shock to get used to but we came to love it. Since it looked a bit alike a bus, we nicknamed it Busby.

For this road trip in Australia we have again gone with Maui and rented Busby’s sister ship, though this one has the luxury of air-conditioning. Naturally, we’ve tagged it Busby II.

After a morning with our hosts hitting the shops for some supplies to get us started, we headed to the airport to drop off our Avis rental car. From there it was a A$32 cab ride to the Maui rental depot to collect Busby II.

The flat-roofed collection shack was steamingly hot: the main aircon had broken and the substitute aircon was hardly working; switching on extra units blew the fuses.. Collection at Aukland 2017 had been a nightmare of a wait and here we had a similar wait though not quite as bad. Actually, it’s three waits, first to get booked in, then to have a what is and is not covered conversation with electronic forms to sign, then to be “shown” the van. Quite what the purpose of the online check-in is, I don’t know. Well, I suppose some of the details on the iPad form were already completed.

I asked about tolls. This was not as easy as with the Avis rental car. We could open an account with Linkt, or just pay retrospectively if we bumped into a toll – I didn’t really expect to –  by calling a number; you have three days to pay. What we couldn’t do was open an account right now and we had to drive back “home” which would normally be through tolls.

We’d made the mistake of saying we were somewhat familiar with the vans, having something similar at home and having rented Busby I in NZ. This was a mistake. The handover guy proceeded to tell us next to nothing, other than pointing us to an in-flight information card including the electric cable, gas cylinder and brace position.

He did show us how to make up the bed, after I asked, though most of the time he didn’t seem that familiar with the van. The trouble is, these vans all vary slightly according to vintage and specifics can get confused.

Mr. Handover asked if we wanted toilet chemical. “Duh! Err, yes”.

He asked if we wanted outside table and chairs. “Yes please”. He went to fetch the extras.

I asked about the fridge which he said switched over automatically.

“Do we have satnav?” “Yes.” Excellent.

Eventually we were let loose. Since we had no toll account, we programmed the satnav to avoid tolls and took the scenic, traffic-light-strewn route back through Brisbane to Camira. It really wasn’t that bad … on a Saturday and it was more interesting than a motorway.

We made it back to our hosts without any problems and turned into the drive so they could have a look round and a poke and prod.

The electric hook-up looked like a domestic Australian plug and David offered to connect us to get the fridge cold for our morning departure. BUT … the mains connector was actually a bit larger, 15 Amp as opposed to 10 Amp. So, we couldn’t precool the fridge. No biggie.

It was our hosts birthday so G&Ts were calling loudly. We surrendered to the call for our last night in Brisbane.

To clarify, that is Ipswich, Queensland, Australia as opposed to Ipswich, Suffolk, UK. Right, that’s cleared that up.

Our hosts’ house is flown over every evening by Fruit Bats leaving their roost to go foraging. These are spectacular creatures, so he decided to take us to Queens Park where there is an enormous roost. In and around Nerima Gardens the trees are completely filled with roosting Fruit Bats. An information board implied that there might be three different species co-existing here.  There are many thousands of them. The picture struggles to convey the scale but each of the dark drops beneath the branches in this shot [go on, squint] is a Fruit Bat.

With a bright blue sky [my favourite colour] behind a dark bat with its face in shadow, trying to get a detailed image requires picking the right subject in the right situation. Here’s an attempt. This is one of the Little Red Flying Foxes (Pteropus scapulatus). Cuddle, anyone?

There is a small wildlife area with caged subjects, some of which were quite interesting. I was particularly taken by these very haughty looking spoonbills, appropriately, perhaps, called Royal Spoonbills (Platalea regia). Sadly, it’s captive but I simply couldn’t resist it.

There was some water, too, where there were dragonflies which were decidedly not captive. The temperature was up in the 30s so they were very active. There weren’t any unusual species that I could see but I did manage to snag an Australian Emerald (Hemicordulia australiae) when it hovered in front of me.

In the afternoon, I was anxious to introduce Francine to the Mount Coot-tha Botanic Gardens, which I’d visited and loved on my first Australian dragonfly trip back in 2019. We got there in time for lunch in their very good café before seeing what we could find.

There was plenty of activity but of the same clutch of about 10 suspects. All my previous visits to Australia have been in late November/early December. This is my first experience of late January so the species mix may well be different and more restricted. A couple of Flutterers posed reasonably, though: Yellow-striped Flutterer (Rhyothemis phyllis) and the Graphic Flutterer (Rhyothemis graphiptera).

We are staying with Francine’s first cousin once removed. Ya just gotta love this genealogy stuff. These are the lovely people who used to live in Singapore and played host to us in 2013 when we visited there with a side trip to Cambodia. They now live on a 1-acre lot in a suburb of Brisbane, Queensland.

Our rental car, incidentally, is a Renault Koleos. Whilst I was very grateful to have a satnav – given Brisbane roads life would’ve been much more uncertain without it – this cracked me up. Francine and I have been seeing Renault Koleos cars in France for several years and they sounded, to us, like a digestive tract problem. “Oh doctor, I’ve got a severe attack of koleos.” So, we refer to them as Renault Intestinal Complaints. At last I’ve got one, temporarily. It’s OK but rolls a bit round corners. It is yet to make me belch.

We beat the bounds of our hosts plot to see what we could find, largely to get some fresh air after being trapped in flying cigar tubes and terminal lounges for 30 hours. We were not disappointed.

Our hosts have five hens that live in an overnight hen house wittily labelled “Chicken Run”. The Chicken Run was playing host to a couple of interesting spiders.

One spider was large and the abdominal pattern reminded me of our own Wasp Spider (Argiope bruennichi). Sure enough, a search showed this Ozzie cousin to be a St Andrew’s Cross Spider (Argiope keyserlingi). The zigzag weaving on the web, BTW, typical of Argiope species, is called a stabilimentum. The function of this is open to debate but one theory is that it helps stabilize their large web.

Close by was a much smaller spider, as yet unidentified by me. It looks as though it’s been taking lessons from it’s larger relative in that it, too, is holding its legs out in a St. Andrew’s Cross arrangement of pairs. I must seek help.

Continuing our way around the bounds, my eyes were suddenly drawn to the most colourfully marked Shield bug that I’ve ever seen. This character shone a brilliant metallic blue colour punctuated with bright red markings. It was utterly captivating. I can’t stand the American term for Shield bug, which is Stinkbug, but sadly that’s what the Aussies use. This is a Harlequin Stinkbug (Tectocoris diophthalmus). Well, a splendid creature deserves a splendid name (so let’s avoid the Stinkbug bit).

Boarding our second leg flight overnight to Adelaide went smoothly. I was anxious to check for row 4, curiously missing from the previous flight from London and, lo, there it was. Our ex-London aircraft was an Airbus A350 with no row 4 but the Adelaide bound aircraft was an Airbus A330 complete with row 4. Superstitions go only so far it seems.

KL to Adelaide is a 7-hour flight, mas o menos, but after our initial in-flight meal, this time I failed to get any sleep. “Bother”, said Pooh, irritatedly. We touched down at 08:25 Adelaide time.

Immigration was a breeze – being amongst the first off the plane there were no long queues for the machines – and our bags, though they made us wait and wonder, did turn up. They were re-checked for  the next leg and we made our way to lounge #3, the QANTAS lounge. Sadly the bar doesn’t open until midday, after we board the next plane. They do, however, have a good barista.

For those who don’t know (including to some extent ourselves), Australia has some weird time zoning. Adelaide is now 30 minutes behind Sydney but 30 minutes ahead of Brisbane, whose clocks do not change. Brisbane, Queensland [QLD], is where we are heading to begin our visit.

We are not the only ones heading for Queensland; Queensland is also where tropical hurricane Kirrily is heading. We’ve flown away from storm Isha in the UK and are heading for hurricane Kirrily. Brilliant. You couldn’t write it, could you? Current predictions expect Kirrily to make landfall at Townsville in Far North Queensland [FNQ]. That’s some way north of Brisbane but, even if predictions are accurate, we’re almost bound to get some overspill.

Our QANTASLink flight took off on time [midday] and we touched down safely under cloudy skies in Brisbane. There seemed to be few bags checked on the internal flight and ours turned up promptly in the domestic terminal. I wondered if we’d have to go to international to find an Avis desk but happiness reigned when I found one very near the baggage carousel. Happiness soared even higher when the helpful agent found us a car with a built-in satnav, taking the stress out of finding our hosts.

There are toll roads (quite expensive ones) in Brisbane and it’s controlled by ANPR. The agent set our credit card up to make the process automatic [and less painful – we won’t have a clue how much it’s costing].

30-minutes through some heavy Brisbane traffic got us “home” to a reviving cup of tea.

Today we fly, or are supposed to fly, from Heathrow terminal 4 to Kuala Lumpur. It will be our first taste of Malaysia Airlines. I say “supposed to” because, though the threat of snow may have receded, storm Isha is threatening havoc across most of the country. There are times when attempting to travel in winter in our climate seems a little like a gamble.

I’d agonized about how to get to the airport. Normally I’d drive and park but leaving the car out in an English winter for a month may flatten the battery,

The train option was quite appealing except for the struggling with baggage on the underground.

Our favourite local, and erstwhile reliable taxi company had been taken over but eventually I bit the bullet and booked with them. They did, at least, send a confirmation of the booking.

Our taxi driver did turn up right on the button at 16:00. He did not have a card machine, as was intended, but fortunately we scraped together the £95 fare. They’ll need a machine on the return trip – I’ve been cleaned out.

We arrived at T4 before 17:30, four hours ahead of our flight. Time to go and enjoy one of the posh lounges. Our check-in agent advised that the QATAR lounge might be better than the other option, Gulf Air.

We drank and nibbled the time away and eventually boarded. Fortunately the London area seemed less severely Isha’d than everywhere else and, after a 30 minute taxi and hold operation waiting for gusts to drop, we lifted off.

We settled into our seats: row 5. Curiously the seats in front of us were row 3. There was no row 4. Odd. I asked a steward about the missing row 4 but no explanation was forthcoming. Our streets often do not have house number 13 for superstitious twaddle and we wondered if something similar applied to 4 in the Malaysian culture. Curious; I must investigate. [Yep, just checked: the number 4 is not liked in Malaysia.]

After an Asian meal, we hit the lie-flat beds which are a boon – we both managed to sleep, though I had to remove the blanket ‘cos I was too hot. Oddly, on this Airbus A350, the centre aisle seats have no bins above them, which means that there is no air nozzle to open up above you either. I wonder why?

I came round with three hours to run and had some of an Asian breakfast but, in honesty, there’s a bit too much food when you’re inactive.

It’s now Monday evening (22nd) and we’re relaxing in the Malaysia Golden Lounge. I even had a wonderfully reviving shower in between G&Ts. How civilized.