Lakes with no water and dirt roads

Today we headed south from Broken Hill to Menindee Lakes, a shorter drive this time and only a mere 100km or so. We were staying on a caravan park a little outside of Menindee. If Broken Hill was Silent Hill, this was it’s sinister cousin. A huddle of caravans in the middle of nowhere all covered in dust and no signs of any people. But what sold the place to us was the boating lake only 50m from our cabin - that was until we were mobbed by zillions of pesky flies coming up from the water.

I can’t believe we spent so long looking out for Kangaroo’s. They are now becoming commonplace. There must have been loads living around the caravan park and I counted 17 on my evening run. The search for the perfect photo goes on though and Chris spent about half an hour upon arrival at the place chasing one unfortunate kangaroo around the park, camera in hand.

The town of Menindee itself was tiny and I spent most of the day actually believing there was only 98 residents, (the sign had a digit missing). There is only one main road into Menindee - the one we came in on, and the rest are classed as unsealed (ie sand, dirt etc). It seems so cut off . My fear of snakes continues to thrive. The locals informed us that brown snakes are common in Menindee, one of their friends had had to wrestle and kill one that morning, and to my horror, apparently the time taken for a brown snake to kill you is only 2 mins, 3 mins less than in Broken Hill!!

We briefly went to find the Menindee lakes (being even more careful in case of snakes) but to our disappointment, there was no water to be seen, apparently they have been dried out for years. We did find a small ‘lake’ full of stinking water and dead fish which Chris insisted on photographing. I was non too impressed at being dragged to the water edge across sand and debris in my flip flops. I had remembered about the existence of spiders at this point and returning to the 40C car was a much more appealing option.

Tomorrow, we were planning on risking the unsealed ‘dirt’ roads to get to Mildura, our next stop, rather than head back up to Broken Hill and around on the highway, but on our outing to the lakes (a couple of Km down an unsealed road), we decided we didn’t dare risk it with a hire car and also the chance of there being sand to get stranded in - miles and miles from anywhere. The long way round it is for us tomorrow then!