Back O’ Bourke!

Today had two destinations - the towns of Cobar and Bourke. Cobar was first being only about 70km from the previous night’s campsite. A nice city centre with ample opportunity for Carolina to get her shopping fix, and a few tourist sights such as “The Big Beer”.
About 170km further on was the famous town of Bourke which was our final destination for today. Known by reputation as being the boundary of the “real” outback, in the past anyone travelling beyond Bourke was venturing into the unknown realms of the great Australian wilderness known as the Outback. Henry Lawson who spent a lot of time in Bourke and wrote many of his poems here penned the phrase “ If you know Bourke, you know Australia”.
So coming to Bourke was a special event for the new Australian among us and Carolina enjoyed looking around. In particular she was excited to see more black cockatoos which were probably also around in Henry Lawaon’s day.
Bourke unfortunately now has the reputation of being one of Australia’s most dangerous towns with youth crime being very high. So we stayed at the Mitchell Caravan Park today to provide that little extra bit of security.
It was very quiet around the town with fewer people than we expected. Nevertheless we hopped into the car and toured some of the sights. This included the painted water tower of the aboriginal athlete Percy Hobson who won a Gold Medal at the 1962 Commonwealth Games for the high jump. A main attraction in Bourke is the Back O’ Bourke exhibition which gives a detailed history of the city and the surrounding areas which were at the frontier edge of settlement for so many years during the 1800s and 1900s.
Of course the Darling River played an enormously important role in the development of Bourke by providing not only water but also a means of transport for taking the produce from the area out to the east coast.
The Mitchell Caravan Park is an oasis of green among the generally drier areas of the city. When we got back to the caravan after touring Bourke a large central campfire was burning in the middle of the Park so we joined it only to find out we were gate crashing a large group of caravanners from Toowoomba who were on a 1-month mystery tour. They only find out each night where they are going the next day! They did however welcome us joining their midst and were very friendly.
For dinner tonight we had some of the pork chops we had bought at the pig farm in Coffin Bay and they were delicious! Tomorrow morning is forecast to be a chilly 5 degrees. We will complete our quick tour of Bourke before heading further north to Cunnamulla.Read more