Silo Trail (road trip - no safety net!)

The destination we are aiming for is Mildura and Wentworth. This is where the Darling and Murray Rivers come together and is a great sight, so we have been told. It’s about 500km so what to do on the journey?

Old silos, approx 45m high, have been painted and become a bit of a tourist attraction. One area has created a soli trail that is almost the same route as we would take if going directly, so off we set.

Many (all?) of the portraits are of local people.

As the end of the first day (Monday) approached it was strange not to have the safety net of Bertha. We couldn’t simply pull off and camp ... we we could, but that would have been miserable. We stayed and ate a hotel that had some additional cabins, quite small but perfectly adequate.

On the Tuesday night we’d arrived at Mildura and booked a small self-contained cottage for two nights to enable us to explore the area.

The journey took us from the sheep area, through the wheat belt where individual fields were huge, over 100 acres. The land was flat and dusty, the temperature in the mid30s and hardly a cloud in the sky, just as we like it.

Unfortunately, we also came across swarms of flies. No sooner did we get out of the car and they were all around us, eyes, nose, mouth, ears; awful. When we returned to the car a number would always manage to get in. The only way to get them out was to drive with all of the windows open to try and suck them out. If we’d been in Bertha, they’d have all gone down the back and been sat around the table having a party.Read more