Chapter 36

Pirates of Penzance was wonderful! We went out on Saturday morning and bought the boxed DVD set we'd given to Sarah and a number of CDs to play in the car as we drove. We bought several bottles of water, checked the tire pressure and the oil, and filled up on petrol. We packed our bags and a box of books. We tossed our swags in, too. And we were off quite early on Sunday.

The swag has been the reliable shelter and home for many a drover and stockman. Add a sleeping bag or bedding: it's a tent with a built in bed that can be rolled up and thrown into the car.

Sydney to the Kandos turn-off was through the Blue Mountains. With the early sun over our right shoulders, it was lovely. But after two hours, the mountains were past, and we were in the broad, fertile region around Mudgee, and into the wine country. Rachel was singing along to The Mikado. I thought it was racist; she said I was an idiot. By 11:00 we were in the Orana and it was getting quite warm; an hour later we were just east of Dubbo.

"Where to?" Rachel asked.

"I've a fiendish plan," I responded.

"You off-ten do," she said.

"Right. No confusion as to parentage. Any other Penzancian jokes?"

"No, you're the pilot."

I groaned, but made a left at the "Taronga" sign.

"We're going to the Western Plains Zoo!"

"Got it in one. And we're staying at the Lodge, on the premises."

We registered, found that while breakfast and dinner were included, lunch was extra (at Bakhita's Cafe, which only served till 1400), that bicycles were gratis, and were "assigned" to a "Serengeti Lodge." I submitted my bit of plastic and flinched when I saw the total (Oh, well, a honeymoon trip to New Zealand would have been yet more). We dumped our bags, but left books and swag in the boot, donned our hats as the sun was now at zenith, acquired two bikes, and set off to eat lunch. Bakhita's was busy, but we found a table, ordered, and suffered another dollar shock, despite our 10% discount coupon. The zoo's amenities were not a bargain!

We biked, saw a number of large animals, and stopped at a milk bar, but we agreed that the next day we'd take both the early and the post-breakfast tours. There were a lot of children and a number of over-heated, worn-looking adults – several looked at us in envy. We were back at our lodge by 1700 and showered; then we walked to the main hall and lolled about till dinner.

Dinner was good, but a madhouse. It seemed as though a thousand people were there, over half of them under 12. Actually, it was most likely only a few hundred. But it was noisier than expected. We went for a walk in the early twilight before heading back to our lodge – and another shower.

The early walk and talk were interesting; breakfast was good. We had talked over what we wanted to listen to, so we headed for the black rhino, then the meerkat group, and then the hippos. We biked over to see the giant tortoises and stopped again at the milk bar, skipping lunch. We went to hear the lemur talk and then just bike a bit.

"Do you want to go to the shop?" Rachel asked.

"Why? Do you want a t-shirt? Or a plush animal?"

"They might have books."

"True. But at what level? No we can buy things in Sydney or from the net."

Dinner was good, and somewhat quieter. We assumed that the week-enders had gone home. In the morning we left before breakfast. We were in Nyngan by nine and stopped at Kimberly's Coffee and Cake for food. We also checked the coolant and filled up on petrol. Then we went on through Coolibah to Byrock and turned off the highway to the north-east.

"Have you ever read Upfield's Wings over the Diamantina?" I asked Rachel.

"No. Why?"

"He's got Coolibah in it. But he puts it in Queensland. Over a hundred klicks off. Just an author's ruse, I guess."

She looked around. "We're off the map."

"Yes. We're looking for the marsh. Originally, I thought we'd go to Brewarrina and look at the aboriginal fish traps. They're believed to be at least 40,000 years old, possibly the oldest surviving human-made structure in the world. They consist of river stones arranged to form small channels, the traps directed fish into small areas from which they could be readily plucked."

"Amazing!"

"Yes. Anderson and Fletcher in their article eighty years ago, wrote that the spring itself was well known in the early days as the only source of water in a dry season between Marra Creek and the Macquarie and Barwon rivers.

"Cuddie Springs is about 80 km southeast of Brewarrina, so we'll go there. It's a shallow depression or claypan, roughly circular in shape and about 160 meters in diameter. It's situated in a vast plain. After heavy rain this depression is covered with water and becomes the resort of myriads of ducks and other waterfowl. The spring no longer discharges at the surface. But that's all from Anderson and Fletcher. More recently, Judith Field of UNSW and others have excavated a lot of extinct megafauna and evidence that they were killed and eaten at the springs."

"So this track is a time machine."

"Yes. We'll go back 30 to 70 thousand years tonight."

Cuddy Springs is the site of an ancient lake between Marra Creek and the Macquarie River. It is the site of the oldest evidence of bread-making in the world, estimated at 30,000 years BP.

Three sets of human remains dating from 56,000 to 68,000 BP have been found at Lake Mungo in south-western NSW. Footprints in the clay-bed of Lake Mungo have been estimated at 23,000 BP.

We found the site. It was staked out, but it was as dry as a bone and there was no one about. There were no shovels nor picks, though there were some buckets. There were also a few large bone fragments visible in the rectangular pit which was about three meters long, two wide and one deep. The pit's walls and bottom seemed damp, but not wet.

We left the car and walked about.

"This place is old. It's very old. I feel it's old. But it doesn't speak. Maybe it will come tonight."

"We'll sleep here?"

"I will. If you want, I'll take you to Nyngan and get you a room and pick you up in the morning."