Finally, Doc and I are back out in the outback. The “Welcome to Cobar” sign at the edge of town even says “Outback NSW”, so it must be true.
Unfortunately, the reason we’re here is not the best. My uncle is very sick and has been given not long to live, though I don’t know how far I trust that diagnosis. At Christmas the doctors said less than two months, and he’s still here, fighting on. Anyway, we came up here to see them while he’s still alive, rather than wait for a funeral.
So driving up here Doc felt like he was on a mission, with no time to stop anywhere – just in case!
We left early on Wednesday morning, which put us in the Blue Mountains region around breakfast time. Even though summer has just come to Sydney, autumn has settled into the mountains. The trees were turning gold and red and some of the streets were gorgeous displays of autumn colours and would have made spectacular photographs.
But no, Doc decided we didn’t have time to stop, so we drove through there with me doing my best to take photos on the move. The iPhone was hopeless – the shutter lag is a couple of seconds meaning we were past what I wanted to photograph before the photo took. The Lumix compact was a lot better, but it’s still not the best circumstances trying to set up a shot of autumn trees while on the move.
So on we went – without coffee.
As we were driving into Bathurst, Doc piped up with “Have you ever driven around the race track?” (I’m sure I’ve mentioned previously he’s a revhead). He couldn’t believe that I have never experienced the joys of driving Mt Panorama circuit, so somehow, miraculously, we found time to go out there. Sadly for Doc the track was closed to the public and we couldn’t drive around it. He sulked for hours.
His sulk wasn’t helped when I suggested that the time we’d saved not going around Mt Panorama we could spend having lunch in a winery at Orange. It seems that somehow we’d lost all that time again and didn’t have time to stop! So we kept moving.
Eventually, just before we got to Dubbo even Doc decided he was hungry and we had to stop for lunch. Not a real “stop for lunch”, just time to get a bread roll and sit in the park and eat it. Then it was on our way again.
Once we got past Dubbo even Doc relaxed. We were out to wide open spaces again, with smaller towns and bigger spaces between them. Though he started getting a bit edgy again when I wanted to stop to examine some nests in the trees around Trangie. It’s an amazing site. Tree after tree is covered in these nests that look a bit like green ants nests but all wrapped up in cobwebs. I wish I could tell you more, but I didn’t really get a chance to get up close enough to see what they were, so if anybody knows, please tell me!
A cup of coffee and a Danish while we filled up with petrol at Nyngan, and it was only a hop, skip and a jump to Cobar.
So here we are in Cobar, where we got a nice warm country welcome and my Aunt (second cousin? once removed? These family relationships confuse me) was waiting with an antipasto platter and a bottle of nice cold sauvignon blanc, and her son was preparing fresh vegetables for our dinner. And a big family get together is planned for the weekend.
What more could we possibly ask for?
