On the road without breakfast this morning. The plan was to get to Gundabooka National Park as quickly as possible so that we could do a bit of exploring, particularly of the Yapa Rock (Mulgowan) Indigenous Art Site before nightfall so that we could catch up with Margaret and Arthur tomorrow.
Breakfast at Stone's Throw Coffee Shop at Walgett. It was certainly something you wouldn't have expected at Walgett a few years ago. Great food, well-presented, and quite an "upmarket" establishment selling "gifts" as well as breakfast. We sat outside and an aboriginal fellow came along and said "Don't leave town before you have a look at the Jimmy Little artwork on the water tower". We appreciated the chat as it was not the way we were going and would have missed it. Beautifully done.
Jimmy was Australia’s first Aboriginal recording artist, ‘Royal Telephone’ was released in 1963 and sold over 75,000 albums. Jimmy’s wife Marjorie Peters-Little was born in Walgett, she and Jimmy lived and are buried here. The gentle giant healed many people with his music in Walgett and around the country.
On our way to the water tower, we came across some street trees absolutely covered with red-tailed black cockatoos. We are certainly getting west.
Next stop, Brewarrina, where there are indigenous fish traps that you can actually see.
The Brewarrina Fish Traps, or as they are traditionally known Baiame’s Ngunnhu, are a complex network of river stones arranged to form ponds and channels that catch fish as they travel downstream. Known as one of the oldest human-made structures in the world (estimated to be over 40,000 years old), the traps are located in the Barwon River on the outskirts of Brewarrina.
The fish traps work by using stone walls to guide fish that are swimming upstream into the holding ponds where the Aboriginal People traditionally caught them with their bare hands, used their spears or blocked them in ponds to be caught later. According to Aboriginal tradition, the ancestral creation being, Baiame, created the design by throwing his net over the river and, with his two sons Booma-ooma-nowi and Ghinda-inda-mui, built the fish traps to its shape. But according to oral history, the fish traps (and the technology behind them) were inspired by nature—by the pelican, with the traps acting like a pelican’s beak to scoop fish out of the water.
The creation of the fish traps, and the Aboriginal Lore governing their use, helped shape the spiritual, political, social, ceremonial, and trade relationships between Aboriginal groups from across the greater landscape. The fish traps were an important site of food production, work, trade and consumption.
What was it about disasters happening in threes? No sooner had we arrived in Brewarrina than one of our tyre alarms went off telling us that we had a leak in one of our van tyres. It was a reasonably slow leak so we thought that we would be able to keep pumping it up every now and then to be able to get to a tyre service in Bourke about 100km away. After pumping it up a few times (about every 20 ks or so) it was obvious that we weren't going to get to Bourke that way so we "bit the bullet" and changed the tyre.
On arriving at Bourke we dropped the leaking tyre off at the tyre service and headed to the Information Centre for some details on Gundabooka and hopefully some afternoon tea. No such luck re the afternoon tea as the coffee machine was turned off at 3pm. To add to our misery we received a call from the tyre service that they couldn't repair our tyre as the leak was through the rim and they didn't have a replacement rim or a tube that size for a temporary repair. Bugger!!
Fortunately, the rims on the Prado are the same size so the Prado spare could be used in an emergency. So we push on in the hope of getting a tube somewhere in our travels, probably not until Mildura.
To further add to our misery there were no coffee shops open in Bourke at this hour, so after getting a very ordinary takeaway coffee at a service station and fueling up, we headed for Dry Tank Campsite about 20km into Gundabooka National Park.
So much for the plan to see Yappa Rock today. As the plan was now to meet up with Margaret and Arthur at Louth which was only about 80km away, we would visit Yapa Rock first thing in the morning (about 30k away into the park).
A nice campsite at Dry Tank even if there was someone else in our allocated spot. Fortunately, there were plenty of vacant campsites so it wasn't a major issue - we'd already had our three 'disasters' for this trip.
