17 June 2026 – 25 kms – Menindee to Kinchega National Park
Barkindji Country
What do we do with today? The rain is coming again tomorrow. Today there will be strong northwesterlies. So a dash to Broken Hill before the rain is out of the question. I don’t have any desire to wait out the rain here in tiny Menindee.
There is a national park nearby that is an old sheep station. I feel like we’ve already covered off on ‘old sheep station’ history and sights, but there is cheap indoor accommodation out there, and the opportunity to see a bit more of the river vegetation and some of the lakes (dry at the moment) in the lake system. This sounds like the best plan I can put together given the wind and rain forecast.
Menindee says it has 500 people on its entry sign, but it’s no metropolis. The main street has a pub, post office, supermarket, a lot of government services sorts of places (e.g. rural transaction centre), a tiny TAFE, a church, a long gone cafe, an old council building and a visitor info centre that’s never open.
Back a block is the primary school, another pub (both in town are owned by the same people but cater to different clientele) and an open takeaway shop. Around town there’s a small hospital, a preschool, a tiny rail station and an administrative building for the water folks. There’s also a tiny petrol station on the edge of town. There’s an oval with a small skatepark and public toilets. And that’s about it.
The supermarket does hot foods and has quite a reasonable selection of veg and meat (frozen and fresh) given its location. There are only five aisles in there, but you definitely won’t starve if needing to resupply here. The prices are reasonable for the location. The peanut butter jar I buy is $6.50 – that is $5.50 at a major supermarket if you bought it at full price. I get a chocolate bar for $6.00 that is $4.00 when on sale at a major supermarket.
I also get 5 litres of water to take with me out to the national park. The locals don’t drink the water here, so I opt not to either. There will be bore water out at the national park that you have to boil before drinking, but 5 litres will quench my thirst for today and part of tomorrow before we have to see how well my guts like that bore water. Sourcing potable water is just one of the extra logistical tasks on this trip that I don’t normally worry at all about. And, as many would know, potable does not always equal palatable!
Then we head out to the national park. Along the way are more of those ‘shacks on stilts’ – I’m not sure if people live there full time or they are holiday homes. They have the creative names of holiday homes but the look of people living there permanently.
Our plan for the next few days looks like this:
Today – ride along the river and look at the old homestead and woolshed
Tomorrow – hang out at the Shearers Quarters accommodation while it rains
Friday – let the roads dry – more hanging out
Saturday – ride out and do the Lakes Drive and then ride out to one of the caravan parks to position ourselves for the ride into Broken Hill on Sunday.
Spoiler alert: it doesn’t work out this way.
But for the moment we are enjoying unseasonably warm temperatures and are comfortably riding and sitting around in shorts and a tshirt.
We ride out along the river among river red gums close to the river and black box a bit further back or higher. The vegetation doesn’t extend all that far from the river, but it’s hard to know what this would have looked like before white settlement. The riverboat trade cut down a lot of trees to fuel the paddlesteamers and lot of trees were cut down for buildings and infrastructure. A lot died after the introduction of sheep and the severe turn-of-the-century droughts. And more died after river regulation began and flooding became much, much less frequent.
We ride in and out of the ruts from vehicles that have driven when the soil was wet. This is the black soil country of the floodplain and it becomes impassable with very little precipitation. I could have camped along here, in one of the 34 dispersed sites, but that is not a wise decision with the amount of rain forecast tonight. Most other people seem to have had the same idea, as I see no one in any of the sites I pass. If I did not have somewhere to stay with access to water where I can wait for the roads to dry, I wouldn’t have come out to the national park at all.
After the weir, I turn off and head up to the old homestead site and have a wander around the ruins. The homestead was located on a billabong so it had access to fresh water. This water also flooded the site a few times and the site was abandoned after the 1956 floods and relocated to another property 50 kms away.
Then we go have a look at another woolshed and take some pics I think my dad might like.
I then chat to two different couples interested in the bike. One couple raves about all the things to see and do in Broken Hill. They can’t believe I have everything I need to be self-sufficient on the bike. The guy is very impressed by the tyres and the front cradle holding my tent.
The other couple did a bike tour in England some years ago but didn’t like riding on the road. They have all the gear, still, but aren’t too excited about a future trip because of the dangers of traffic. I suggest they look into the various rail trails around Victoria – as you can do short tours that are off-road. Rail trails are definitely not my thing, but I’ve met plenty of people that almost exclusively do little tours along those.
Eventually everyone leaves and I’ve got the whole place to myself. The room I’ve booked ($27/night) is just two bunk beds in a small room. There are too-soft foam mattresses encased in plastic/rubber protectors. There is a power point, and, importantly, a reverse cycle AC. (It gets incredibly hot out here in summer and winter nights can be chilly). I also have access to a big kitchen and huge lounge area in another building with a very comfortable couch. I spend the evening here looking at maps and trying to figure out what might be possible with the month I’ve got left to ride.
