Travelling from Lameroo to Balranald

Balranald Caravan Park, NSW

On the first day of our 2007 holiday in New South Wales and Victoria we travelled from home in Murray Bridge, South Australia, through to Lameroo where we had a picnic lunch. After lunch we travelled on into Victoria. We drove through the small towns of Murrayville, Underbool, Ouyen and Manangatang, where we stopped briefly to refuel. Several times we stopped on the side of the road for my wife to take photos of native plants flowering. I took the opportunity during these short breaks to take a short walk and to observe the birds along the way.

At Tooleybuc we crossed a very narrow bridge over the Murray River. This bridge allowed only one vehicle at a time to cross. Fortunately the town is rather small and the traffic is never heavy, so it would be rare to have to wait more than half a minute for the bridge to clear. Crossing the river meant we were now in the state of New South Wales. That meant we had been in three states of Australia in about three hours.

We pressed on towards our destination for the night. Originally I had planned to reach Hay by sunset, but our late start in the morning meant we would be about a hundred kilometres short of there. We settled for a cabin in the caravan park of the small river town of Balranald. This park is right next to a busy interstate highway. The heavy trucks roaring past all night were a little disturbing, far noisier than what we are used to at home. Despite that we managed a reasonable night’s sleep.

One disturbing sight just before reaching Balranald was a dead kangaroo on one side of the road and a dead Wedge-tailed Eagle on the other. This is the largest of our birds of prey and a magnificent bird to see soaring on high. This unfortunate bird must have been feeding on the carcass of the kangaroo and hadn’t flown away in time to avoid being hit.