21 June 2026 – 113 kms – Menindee to Broken Hill
Barkindji and Wiljakali Country
I’m riding by feel down the dirt road at sparrow’s gurgle once again. I’m away by 5.30am, trying not to outride my front light on the slightly gluggy road. This cut-through saves us 4 kms than if we rode out the entry road and double-backed on the main road. This short cut is the third side of a triangle in that sense. But in the dark and fog, it does ride a wee bit slow.
Then we have that southwesterly pushing us along for 10 kms or so along sandy undulations and past the turn-offs for Wilcannia. We also pass over the canal that connects the lakes along the way. The sun rises but we don’t see it. It’s fog that’s lifted to cloud, so the day just goes from dark to grey.
We wind along the edge of the lake which sits over the rise. We pass the turn-off to Sunset Strip where the air smells of woodsmoke. The little development is a collection of homes and holiday homes along the lake built in the 1960s when the lakes began to be used for recreation. Those poor souls thought they had potable water, but don’t: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-26/sunset-strip-residents-learn-water-unsafe-after-66-years-nsw/106375164
We climb higher into gentle hills, blue bush giving way to salt bush giving way to mulga giving way to blue bush again. We go 20 kms without smelling goats this morning. And the first 30 kms seem to go fast. We only have two cars overtake us from behind in the first 2.5 hours – one in the dark and one shortly after dawn.
We keep gently climbing with those long views over low vegetation. The difference in elevation between Broken Hill and Menindee is 254 metres. Broken Hill lies at 315 metres; Menindee is 61 metres above sea level. So we have those metres to climb today, as well as the climb through some ranges at the end of the day.
Beyond the 30 km mark, the traffic starts to pick up, as does the wind. This slows us down. But we consistently get 30 kms done in the mornings on this trip without much wind, so the early starts do help!
The caravans are let loose around 10.30am as usual, and there is a car every 5-10 minutes by 11am. The sight lines are long and the traffic mostly courteous. I have no squeezes. I’m out there again pedalling an algebra problem from a textbook.
The tyre feels like we’re dragging through that wet sand again. Either there’s a thorn in there or that ancient valve that is a bit fiddly these days is playing with me (if I twist it too tight, it lets air out; if I don’t twist enough, it lets air out). The tyre seems to get softer as we go. But I pedal on. And on. And on.
We pass over the dry Stephens Creek at about the halfway point. Once upon a time, there was a roadhouse here. Only the foundations remain, but there is some land around where you could camp if 113 kms in one day was too much. Or, if you knew there was no rain forecast, you could just camp in the dry creek bed. This is the creek Explorer Charles Sturt followed. It starts north of Broken Hill in the Barrier Ranges and peters out somewhere on its way to the Menindee Lakes to the south and east.
After one long gentle rise, we start seeing lots of nothing. No bushes really either. If the sky were clear, it would feel endless. Somewhere in there, we also randomly cross into the Central Time Zone – set your clock back 30 minutes.
Then, at kilometre 66.68, not long after a lady in a ute stops, turns around, hops out of her truck and drags a dead kangaroo off the road, I see an animal in need of rescue myself. I initially pass by as I see it out of the corner of my eye. But I have to go back.
And then, there, on the side of the road, tumbled about and a bit dirty lying there in the grass… is… you won’t guess in a million years. A stuffed elephant. What are the freaking chances of that?
The only other stuffed animal I have rescued from the road was 14 years ago. And that was a freakin’ elephant, too!!!!!!! What are the chances of finding and rescuing two elephants from the road 14 years apart! She’s a bit wet, and a bit dirty, and probably more than a bit traumatised. I put her in a front fork bag and on we go.
On the horizon, the first hills appear. At first, they just look like someone’s been drawing a really long line across the page, gotten tired and left a bit of a wave in the line. The low cloud obscures a better view. As the day proceeds, the line becomes more like a charcoal smudge before they become rounded hills in the distance.
The tyre is feeling so sluggish. I really need to pump it up, but there is nowhere to pull over, and you definitely don’t just roll off into the vegetation out here. I ride on and on, feeling more and more sluggish.
Then, ta-dah! Up the crest of one hill, on each side of the road is a pull-out rest area. And each side has a rubbish bin! I can get off the road and lean the bike against that! Thank you, road gods. This definitely helps us feel a bit more speedy through the hills to come.
The Mt Darling Range is about four waves of rock with broad valleys in between. The road angles up the side of each wave and then hangs a right or left to crest the range. Then you roll into a broad valley and repeat. The bushes are bright green and the ground has a green hue to it that it normally wouldn’t have. All the rain gives life to the vegetation and present a liveliness I wasn’t expecting on this trip.
I’m so excited to ride through some hills. We actually use a few gears, and one of the hills in the middle of the range has a Caution: Steep Hill sign for the cars going the other direction. I make it up that fine, but it’s obvious we’ve been riding a lot of flat and gentle terrain recently. How I miss hills! I immensely enjoy the climbs and then the gentle downhills through those rocky hills and broad valleys in between.
Eventually the road takes us past the go-kart track where an event is being held today. We climb past that and then climb right through all the mining entrances and tailings piles. A bike lane appears – but it’s really just the road shoulder and it’s full of crud and broken glass. It turns out all the roads are full of crud here. It’s just a dusty, gritty town, and even though I see street sweepers out and about every day I’m here, the sides of the roads are just full of grit and gravel.
I make it into town by 1.00 pm. That’s excellent given the sluggish tyre and the headwind across very open ground. Even though I feel like I keep rebuilding the same muscles over and over again after each of these long breaks of zero days, I’ve definitely gotten stronger since the start. And my butt never complains anymore.
The caravan parks here are both pretty crap for tenting, and both on the outskirts of town, on opposite sides. So I don’t want to tent and leave bike and gear unattended at a caravan park while I do town stuff. My preference would be for a cabin in a caravan park so I can cook meals, but they were too expensive. So I found a really good deal on a motel (which is across from one of the caravan parks and run by the same people) that makes it less than $80 per night. That’s a real bargain since most places start at $120 these days anywhere you go. Air BnB places tend not to be any cheaper these days, and they take long-term housing away from locals, so I avoid all of those except in extreme circumtstances.
We’re here for two days – one day to see the sights and one day to restock and resupply and figure out if we’re going to be able to ride out to Mutawintji National Park or not.