At Hay the Murrumbidgee River is all but dry

Sturt Hwy

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Before we left a lovely fine day of weather in Mildura I needed a script from the chemist and couldn't chance it with Hay so we went in Mildura. While walking to the chemist some lady beeped us and it turned out to be Betty, Helens aunt, she had just been to the chemist and was about to back out. That all done we headed off and over the Murray and back into NSW. Just out of town we stopped at a road side stall and bought 3 bags of naval oranges for $5 for the lot and further up the road a bag of mandarines and a bag of grapes for $2.50 each. The prosperous farms soon dwindled and we entered an area of salt bush and mulga trees and stubble grass and slowly the trees disapeared all together and all we had were wide open plains of nothing. Further along a herd of black cows were on a cattle drive all busy eating what they could along the walk. After the cattle the countryside slowly became vacant, just look at the photos. Arriving in Hay after 291k, I pondered where we should press on towards West Wyalong on the mid western hwy, but there is very little along the way and the next town was 113k away so we decided to stop for the night. Good little van park with a good pub over the road. I reckon half the van park were at the pub for dinner. Quite cool here morning and night the owner said but lovely through the day. The Murrumbidgee River is all but dry, some of the locals have never seen it so dry ever before. One theory is that someone opened the gate on the weir and the water went and has never refilled. There are too many "officials" fiddling with water these days and selling it off to the biggest buyer, then the little man gets what is left, normally nothing. Just south of Hay there are huge and they are huge, 4k long water storage systems like dams to irrigate the rice and cotton farms, but whether there is rice growing we didn't see any of it. Google Earth my be the only way. Tomorrow we hope to get away earlier than usual to try to get to Forbes, after that the next stop should be Coonabararban, Goondiwindi, Possum Park then Theodore then Rockhampton. So that is six planned stops with one day up our selve.