Day 7 & 8 Broken Hill, Gillgandra and Home

The day started with a sunny sky again and feeling like in familiar territory. My family had relatives in the Broken Hill and Menindee area when I was growing up and we used to travel out here when I was young. Originally it was in Dad’s old series Landy and the later in an early classic RR – finally with air con which was great as we usually came out during the Sumer holidays.

Olde Bridge over the Darling at Willcannia

Willcannia

We still had our spare Jerry of fuel in the back to decided to run through to Cobar and see how the tank went. We headed to Willcannia and stopped more morning tea – in the Morning room on the side verandah. It was great to see a few coffee shops, a gallery and a new camp ground that had started since our last visit a couple of years ago. We had coffee and a great piece of Lemon merang pie.

Continuing along to Cobar for lunch we got about 65km out and the fuel light came on so we topped the tank with the Jerry of fuel and rolled in to town for a morning of 476 km. we were still averaging 15.5L/100 so we should be able to get about 500km from the tank.

Bogan River at Nyngan

The afternoon cruise brought us into Gilgandra and a lovely Indian dinner at a motel. We had to stop instead of continuing on because although all the head lights were working, the fuel and temp dash lights weren’t and it made it hard to keep track of things in the dark.

Today we headed off at 7:30 and filled up with fuel at the Roadhouse. About 30 semi-trailers and we looked out of place as we headed out behind two trucks heading North. After driving 4000km today was the hilly day. We were doing the opposite speed to the trucks up and down the hills so we found a gap between a couple of groups until they left us at Coonabarrbran to go north and we continued east to Gunnedah and Tamworth.

After and break in Tamworth to top up the oil we faced the Moombie ranges to rise up to the tablelands from 200mtrs ABSL to 1100mtrs at Armidale. The old girl pulled well up the hills and the temp didn’t rise above half all the way to the top. We finally cruised into Armidale at 1:45pm feeling both satisfied and disappointed the trip was over.

We texted Jeff (the guy we bought her off)  in WA to let him know we had arrived and all was well. Not bad for a 29 year old Landy.

4466km,

1000 meters of altitude,

688 Litres of fuel (15.5 L/100km),

16 fuel stops,

8 motels and

3 states.