Day 2 – September 23. Irymple to Broken Hill via two corners and the backroads.

Early start with breaky at Macca’s for some and meeting place arranged for 8.30am. Unfortunately Reve was not so well this morning, a migraine the culprit, so she was noticeably absent from proceedings and spent a good deal of the day resting in the car, eventually she took some of Meg’s ‘good’ drugs and started to turn the corner later in the day.

Our first stop was the arranged boat hire, some 150kms or so from Mildura, just over the SA border, along the Border Fence Track to Customs Boat Hire, where we hired a reasonably luxurious ‘day’ boat for the 15 minute trip up the Murray River upstream to where the VIC/SA border marker was, a short way up a creek that could be viewed from the boat on the river. We had to break into two groups and Phil was our designated captain for both.

Off the blacktop just over the SA border and onto the Border Fence road. Off road - Yay!

Arrival at  Customs House Hire, the group getting briefed on the trip, upstream to see the corner post.

Our Designated driver. Phil has a boat licence and got the job.

Our boat name. Swamp Hen.

Fantastic red cliffs, with gums and willows (unfortunately about the willows - a weed)

and this is what it was all about - the corner post on the bank. The actual corner is in the middle of the river somewhere evidently.

More cliffs.

 I was with the first group and we motored along the river beside some amazing red cliffs along the muddy Murray. We stopped and took many photos of the border marker, before heading back. Unfortunately my plans to capture the GPS location with the waterproof Panasonic camera failed and I didn’t manage a selfie either.

So back we tootled, to offload us and pick up the second group, as I was telling Mary Morgan that I didn’t manage the photos I wanted, Mary J suggested I jump on with the second group as well. So I did and was glad of the fact too, not only did I get the camera going and the shots I wanted, Sarah was determined to touch the post. In order to do this she needed to swim (or wade as it turned out) over to the post, probably 40 metres or so as the area was too shallow and snaggy for the boat. A brilliant effort by Sarah to strip down to undies and shirt and wade through the muddy bottom to the post. Great entertainment for us and another tick for Sarah’s bucket list.

The folk at Customs House Hire were brilliant, instead of charging us the quoted daily price, they took  a credit card imprint and charged us half the amount as we were only out for  little while.

The recently engaged couple.

Standing around on the bow of the boat..photos of something.

Yep...that is Sarah standing AT the post. wet to the waist from the walk through the mud. We are all pretty proud of that effort.

It was quite a distance in to get there.

Struggling up to ankle/calf deep mud.

 From there we headed off to find the ‘other’ corner – NSW/VIC, which is on private property. After a few wrong turns and tracks, we eventually arrived at Borderinga or something like that, a farm on which the corner is located. The owner Roger, was very helpful, after Stef and Meg broke the ice, he led us quite some way across his property on his 4 wheeler to the corner, where he proceeded to give us a run down on it’s history etc. This is called Mc Cabe’s corner, and was only re-surveyed a few years back which resulted in a correction which resulted in the border moving upstream about 250m to its current position. Evidently the Surveyor General’s team of many with 6 laptops, cross checked and mapped the surrounding areas at 6 points to pinpoint the corner to within 1 inch of correct

The shenanigans continues. Just how much fuel did Stef need? Steve is determined to get better mileage.

Then it was off to Renmark for fuel and lunch, before proceeding out to Cooltong to turn off the blacktop towards Broken Hill. Again after a few wrong turns and changes of leader we eventually travelled through some great country along sandy and gravel tracks, at times very dusty, through a sheep and goat farm, over many, many grids. There was quite a bit of radio banter, with much stirring and fun along the way. We saw lizards, emus, roos, cattle, sheep and goats along with an assortment of birds. After about 2 hours we hit the Silver City Highway and followed through to BH. The last hour to hour an half at dusk and dark and all watching extremely diligently for roos, sheep and goats. We all arrived safely and set up camp at Broken Hill Caravan Park (thanks again to Meg for phoning ahead) the place is pretty full, but we have all sorted ourselves out for two nights here.

We then shot off to see if we could grab a countermeal. By this stage is was after 9.00 Victorian/NSW time, but Broken Hill operates on SA time despite its NSW location. So we slipped into the Mulga Hill Tavern to enjoy a delicious meal. Some chose to eat in and others got a quicker take away option, as once again we are all pretty tired and in bed asap.

Will get this up tomorrow sometime, as I need to check some facts and download some pics.

Hope all is well with all of you out there.