Australia day 16

12 July

Considering how far we'd gotten yesterday, I realized that getting to Canberra by Wednesday and Sydney by Friday would require simplifying the route ahead. The road through the mountains between Wagga Wagga and Cooma has caravan parks, but it didn't seem like a good idea to go through those mountains in the dark. Wagga Wagga seemed too close to be my goal for the day, but Cooma seemed too far. We left Mildura with a vague idea where we'd be sleeping during the coming night.

Shortly after leaving Mildura we crossed the Murray River and entered the state of New South Wales, leaving Victoria behind for good. The territory we crossed now seemed as desolate, if not more so (if that is possible), than the outback we'd crossed south of Coober Pedy a few days ago. Once again I fell in behind a road train as soon as it passed me while I was valiantly trying to maintain the speed limit. When I'm all by myself out there on a desolate highway I tend to fall below the speed limit while trying to wrestle with the wind for control of the caravan's steering wheel. Again, I followed this road train for over an hour, until we reached Hay. All along the roadside we saw balls of white lint, like remnants of snow in the ditch, but this was cottony or wooly. Had I prepared some sacks for collecting it, I could have collected quite a load within a kilometer alone. I assumed it was wool, considering the region we were traveling through, but later, in Hay, I was informed that it was cotton.

Now Hay is the kind of place you'd think had nothing to do. We have discovered that almost every town we've stopped in (or driven right through) has an information center. If you seek them out when you first arrive in town you'll find they can be really really helpful. They have so much useful information on so many topics, you'd be foolish not to visit them every time you come to a new area. We learned that the Sheep Shearers Hall of Fame in Hay, called "Shear Outback" was scheduled to put on a sheep shearing demonstration in 20 minutes. We high-tailed it over there and got there with 13 minutes to spare (traffic on Hay's central thoroughfare slowed us down or we'd have gotten there sooner). On the way over there I found more ways to use "hay" in a sentence that Razelle could bear (Hey, look!; What the hey?; That ain't hay; Hey, hey hey; Hey we live in Heh, too [our neighborhood in Beer Sheva], etc. Razelle groaned at each one. When we got to the ticket window I even said to the attendant, "Hey there!" We got two tickets and found that the Shear Outback shearing shed was coincidentally out back (behind the museum – you see what too much driving can do to a fellow's mind: he starts telling jokes only he thinks are funny).

Our demonstrator was a veteran of the trade. His name is Billy. He answered all our questions. As with the whale museum in Albany (weeks ago, it seemed) we were the only attendees of this demonstration. 

We felt like VIPs as Billy sheared a sheep just for us. The most important fact I came away with is that sheep must be sheared or they will die. Therefore, because this isn't something that can be done by automation, someone has to do it, and they have to know how to do it well and they have to do a lot of sheep at a time. I gained a great deal of respect for Billy and his fellow professionals. We returned to the museum and went through it with a lot more appreciation for all the professional in the wool industry, after watching Billy and listening to all he had to say.

Before bidding Hay goodbye we called ahead to the caravan park in Wagga Wagga to make a reservation. "No problem, sir," the cheery voice in Wagga Wagga said, "I'll be waiting for your arrival with a light on." And she was true to her word. We got the last site in the place. After we pulled through the gate, she turned of the reception office light and called it a day.

We returned to the information center in Hay after that and asked about the road ahead. Someone off-handedly mentioned that the route I'd chosen through the Snowy Mountains required snow tires. I told Razelle that nowadays snow tires are not sold because radial tires are adequate for driving on snow. Besides, how much snow could there be in Australia? Probably some mountain peaks with snow caps well above the highway. At the information center the attendee sat at her computer terminal and surfed for information on road conditions and weather reports for the region ahead. That's what I meant about these information centers being very helpful. We were told the road was open and the probability of precipitation in Cooma for tomorrow was only 30%. We thanked her and drove on.

Getting to Wagga Wagga involved the same kind of long empty roads across open empty scrub land that has come to typify the outback. Apparently, the section of highway from Coober Pedy to Port Augusta crossed an extension of this same region. Where previously we'd only seem the occasional emu in there, here, we saw the occasional flock of sheep. Once again, I found someone to follow through the twilight and gathering darkness. I felt safer crossing such territory letting someone else plow through the darkness, leading the way for me. Here, during these winter months, light starts to fail by 4:30 PM when it is overcast (as it has been the past two days) and it is already dark out there by 6:00 PM. We reached Wagga Wagga by 7:00 PM. Everyone there was inside their recreational vehicles. It was very quiet. It might as well have been the middle of the night.