{"id":1211,"date":"2024-09-02T12:05:08","date_gmt":"2024-09-02T12:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aerowalsh.com\/cr\/?p=1211"},"modified":"2024-09-02T13:04:12","modified_gmt":"2024-09-02T13:04:12","slug":"sun-1st-sep-dubbo-white-cliffs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/?p=1211","title":{"rendered":"Sun 1st Sep – Dubbo -> White Cliffs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Camping. It’s the great modern prank played by adventure companies. Walking into Macpac you are greeted by sprawling overhead billboards of young couples camping – coffee in hand, embers cooled from last night’s fire, sunset breaking over the escarpment. Propaganda.

Camping. Reality is that you never have all the camping gear you need to be comfortable. Either you don’t own it, or you own it and forgot to pack it. It’s freezing outside at night, and the only time of day it’s pleasant to be outside, mosquitos swarm.

Camping. Why bother with all the effort of the tent? It’s the same 3 degree temperature outside as it is inside.

I get no sleep this night. I am freezing. There’s a bit of pee on my leg. I hate camping.

Having booked the early morning Dubbo Zoo walk, I am relieved to hear the 5.30am alarm and end this torture. The tent is soaked in dew. Our zoo volunteer leaders are perky and defer to James, leader of our trio. This causes an underlying current of derision in Dec, who tries to out alpha Tony the volunteer. This tension is elevated when the tour runs overtime because the little kids keep asking the keepers if the Elan can kill them. And then we get breakfast from the zoo cafe afterwards, on father’s day, which is as much as a disaster as you’d expect. James’ consulting brain is working overtime in the background to gut the zoo cafe and outsource for efficiency, you can tell.

We stop in Cobar for a self-prepared lunch (avo on bread), which is fortunate, as nothing else is opened.

Thankfully for everyone in the car we make it to White Cliffs, which is a gathering of opal miners that live exclusively in caves or shacks. We opted for the cave option. I have a bit of an exhaustion (exasperated by the last hour of the drive) based melt down about the lack of a private bathroom. I calm down, apologise to the group, and we have an extremely expensive and loosely interpreted crispy Korean chicken dinner before retiring to our dugout for a twelve hour sleep that can only be attained by three people who have been camping, who really have no business going camping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
After a pretty mild night in the Cait-Dec tent, James awoke telling us he was “so warm”. If only we could all have been so lucky. DW. Dek was too excited to take this photo. JRT.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Galapogos Tortoises are cute. Also, Katie the volunteer zookeeper thought James was cute as well I think. He was charming all of them. DW. James and Katie couldn’t stop giggling all tour. Tony, head volunteer, was starting to get tetchy. I think he was jealous of their natural chemistry. Katie was about 70. CR. I liked Katie. JRT.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Caitlin walking past rows of boarded up shops in Cobar. The heyday of Cobar seemed well in the past and a number of mines in the area, the main industry, are no longer profitable. DW. This photo was taken as I got lost trying to find the IGA, an impressive feat with only three open businesses in the strip. We had to make an emergency IGA stop as an eight year old girl at the servo told me we couldn’t drink the tap water and could only fill up at the bubbler in the park. The bubbler in the park was broken. CR.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Cobar’s open pit mine. The fact that it is filled with water means it is the largest and most toxic swimming pool around. DW.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
The aforementioned Cobar park. Declan looks (and is) grumpy for reasons that include but are not limited to: the cherry tomatoes were mouldy and we threw them away, the only coffee open in town was Subway, I was rude about the concept of a Subway coffee, there was still four hours of driving ahead, and the bubbler was broken. CR. If there is one thing I hate, it is city slickers being rude to country hospitality staff. It really irks me. I wish to dob both James and Caitlin in for this. However, both apologised and I think are on a redemption arc. Stay tuned for further updates. DW. The milk steamer at Subway was unbelievably loud. Dek was unconcerned about the young workers ear safety. JRT.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Goats everywhere. A few wet years and there is grass enough to support an explosion. Goats are in the middle of the roadside animal ranking. Not as bad as kangaroos, they tend to walk away from the road inside of jumping into the middle of it. But not as confident as crows who hop out of the way at the last second. DW<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
A whole load of nothing. For hours. And again tomorrow for hours. The drive to White Cliffs is long and I snooze off and on in the backseat. Luckily James is a bit too big to fit comfortably in the back and I stake my claims among the throngs of luggage. CR.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
The final hour into White Cliffs is very dicey. We’re driving in at sundown and every animal in the nearest 100km decides to cross the roads. We nearly hit: sheep, kangaroos, lizards, goats, emus, wedgetail eagles and, of particular concern based on their size and total lack of fucks given to cars, herds of black cattle. I am surprised (and a little unnerved) about how few cars and trucks we are seeing on this part of the road. CR. The continuous warnings about black cattle are ominous. The particular focus on them being black brings images on these 3 tonne behemoths emerging out of the dark on blind corners charging straight at you. Good thing Leo purchased my defensive driving course last year. DW<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Drive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1211","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hike-2024"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1211"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1297,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1211\/revisions\/1297"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1211"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1211"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cr.aerowalsh.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1211"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}