#2: [27-Jan-21]

23-Dec-2001 -- Budbabadah, NSW

Continued from 32ºS 146ºE.

This was the fourth and last confluence for day one of the journey.

It was starting to get a little late and as we had travelled quite a considerable distance north of Melbourne, sunset was going to be 20 or 30 minutes earlier than what we are used to at home. Accordingly, we were going to need this confluence to be fairly easy to get it in before sunset.

Our time pressures were further exacerbated by an electrical storm which was rapidly closing in and making things quite dark and gloomy.

As we approached the confluence from the west, a drive-way to a farm appeared just as the arrow on the GPS swung around 90º to the right. The Confluence Gods were certainly shinning on us, as the confluence turned out to be just a hundred metres or so from this drive-way.

The confluence was in a recently harvested wheat field with nice views of some farm buildings to the west with the sun setting behind them.

There were some spectacular lightening strikes to the east and I took over a hundred photos with my digital camera until the memory was full to try to catch one – but unfortunately didn’t succeed.

So with phase one of our journey complete, we motored into Nyngan and settled down for a good night’s sleep at the Nyngan Sundowner Motel.

Kangaroos are particularly active at dusk and the road into Nyngan had kangaroo carcasses on it at least every 500 metres. We had to drive quite slowly as there were constant groups of kangaroos bouncing around on or near the road for about 50 kilometres. Luckily we didn’t hit any of them.

Continued at 31ºS 149ºE.