20160313 – Sunday – On the way to Cobar

I am sitting in the BP service station cafe at Cobar waiting for Pauline and Barry Oliver to pick me up and take me back to their home. Pauline and Barry’s home is on 80,000 acres of land some 35 km out from Cobar.

I have wanted to visit Pauline and Barry at Cobar for very long time but it is so far away from Adelaide. Not only that, but I had this idea that it was hundreds of kilometres out in the desert and that you risked your life to go there.

Well, yesterday Pauline and Barry rang me to see if I had made up my mind whether I would visit him not. I had done my sums and realised that I didn’t have sufficient funds to make such a big detour. So that was that. I packed up my things at the Morrisset Showgrounds and was about to start my return journey home to Adelaide when Pauline rang me again and said that I should come to Cobar and that Pauline and Barry were prepared to pick up the tab for my petrol.

Of course I said ‘No,’ but Pauline reminded me that many years ago when Barry and Pauline had crashed their car, Jeff and I had helped them out because they were short of cash at the time.

Of course I didn’t remember this incident at all but in the end I decided to go to Cobar. I packed myself up from the Morriset showgrounds and began my drive towards Cobar.

I had been a bit nervous about going to Cobar because I had heard open that it was somewhere way out in the desert and that it was quite dangerous and isolated to go there. This was completely wrong impression it was a beautiful drive to Dubbo where I stayed overnight.

I found a free car park in wiki camps which was near the airport. It had a caretaker on site. He told me that I could stay as long as my setup was self-contained. It was self-contained so I stayed.

I connected my phone to my charger in my little trailer and set myself up in my van with my back against the side of the van. I Worked away on my phone doing emails and checking up all sorts of things on internet. Then I went to sleep.

At about 4 AM in the morning I considered getting up and getting on my way early. In the end I decided to sleep for a little longer. I woke up again at about 6 AM and it was raining. I got up and got dressed anyway and the rain was beautiful and it was warm so it didn’t really matter.

I drove on towards Cobar sending and receiving text messages to and from Pauline on the way (with the car stopped of course).

ThoWhen se text messages were a bit confusing. Of course Pauline said it was me that was confused and not her, in fact she called me exasperating. I told her it was the predictive text that did it and that I didn’t actually have ‘snakes in my box.’

Darling Barry and Pauline have just arrived and are going off to do some shopping. Then they took me to Tristan Coles’ home in Cobar and I left my car out the front of their home for the duration of my visit to Paulline and Barrie’s place.

Then Barrie drove on towards their home. We drove on bitumen at first but then it became a dirt road. Their property is callled Kaleno.  There are a number of outbuildings and a big low house with a verandah on one side. Barrie carried my things inside for me and then took me along the veranda to a room that was to be my bedroom for the week. There are four or five bedrooms that open onto the veranda and mine was right at the end of these. Inside there was a double bed and at the veranda end a single bed. I used the single bed for all of my things. There was an air conditioner and a fan to make sure that my sleep was cool and comfortable because it was pretty hot outside.

This is Barry and Pauline’s lounge room.

This is the bedroom wing. Each bedroom opens out onto the veranda.

This is the entrance into the house.

Barrie Oliver, the goat farmer himself.

I went back to the kitchen and Pauline gave me a cup of tea and we talked for a while but then I went to have a sleep because I was still pretty tired from all the driving. When I woke up I went into the house and into the lounge where Barrie and Pauline were watching America’s Got Talent. We watched this until it had finished and then we had dinner which was some left over lasagna that Pauline had cooked for their last night’s dinner.

Pauline mentioned that she didn’t have many photos of her family because they didn’t seem to take many and she asked if some time when I get back home I could go through my files and see if I have any photos of their family. That is something I will do when I get home. What I was hoping I could do while I was here was to get Pauline to tell me some of her stories of her many and varied adventure that she has had on the farms they have lived in over the years. I would love to write up the stories I remember of the Steele and Oliver families over the years as well. We shall see.

Tomorrow I would also like to get Barrie to name all the names of the trees that he named on the way into their property. He is a veritable font of information about the countryside at Cobar and surrounds. It is a very flat country and has a red soil and no weeks on it much, just quite bare, and then out of that the trees grow and they are not very tall and you can see right the way through them with this red soil at the bottom.

Pauline told me that I need to keep the door of my bedroom tightly shut to prevent snakes from getting in. Great!! I also want to walk around the house and take some photographs. I remember that I wanted to put up a photograph up of the afghan that Susanne crocheted for me, so here it is.

Susanne Fergusson crocheted this afghan during her travels “up north” and I was lucky enough to be there when she finished it so I purchased it straight away. I am so happy with it.

I have been thinking about how wonderful this trip has been and once again I felt so grateful to Darren for getting this beautiful little car for me. I am thankful to Geoff and Mitch for fixing up my trailer so it has been able to have a “second life” and become my “escape machine” once more. I am grateful to all my friends and family for their good wishes and their hlep to make this trip possible. Especially and I thankful to my God who owns the “cattle on a thousand hills,” for blessing me and keeping me safe thus far.