Wagga Wagga to Maryborough, the last day to home...

Last night we located a very nice two bedroom ‘serviced apartment’ in Wagga Wagga. Then after a short rest, we went out to dinner for our last night on the road. You ask, ‘what is Wagga Wagga like?’ Glad you asked. It is a town of 57,000 and is the largest town in central New South Wales, servicing the surrounding farming communities. We were not expecting the downtown main street to be like Piccadilly Circus on a Saturday night, but it was.

This is obviously a thriving centre that has many reasons for its busy nature. There is both an RAAF and Army Base here, a large Regional hospital, a University with 700 students attending taking courses on wine making and also, unrelated, cheese making. Co-incidentally there is both a winery and cheese factory of modest means here. A very large light industrial area also explains this sort of oasis of industry in an otherwise massive area of farms with sheep, cattle and again, wheat.

Right now the wheat farmers appear to be suffering from lack of water. Rod talked to one farmer at a filling station today and for the seventh year, he and many others are getting little or no return, possibly enough to seed next year. Some have taken the crop off as hay [?]. Lack of water, plain and simple. The photo shows this one farmer’s wheat that now should be harvested, and this was a relatively good crop!


Earlier in the trip Lyn had asked us if we knew what “The Long Paddock” was. She explained that in times of poor grazing conditions the farmers would set their animals to graze alongside the roads. We encountered three such herds today, one had as many as 300 head of beef animals on it. It makes for interesting driving. It seems that the fence line is set well back from the road, ready for such a situation I can only assume.


We put some miles on today, but did stop at the town of Echuca, a thriving ‘Port’ in it heyday in the 1880’s. Riverboats took the wool to a railhead via the Murray River. It must have been an interesting place with periodic massive flooding in wet years. There is a serious attempt to keep the town going as a tourist centre that appears to be working. The river was a bit low and not at all like what we have at home, but it is a slow moving river as it works its way to the Southern Ocean, ending at Adelaide many miles to the southwest. It could have been the Mississippi 150 years ago, substituting wool for cotton.





Just a note in passing: Some areas of Australia are in an absolute boom because of mining in Western Australia, mainly iron ore for China. Their economy has not been this good in 50 years. Up North there are also good times in the area that they have a surplus of water, the Ord River System, growing crops, [we visited there a month ago]. Of course the major cities of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane are enjoying boom times, reflecting the world economic good times. Perth, in the west, is at the top of the heap as a result of mining. The only people who are having it tough, and I mean tough are the farmers who grow the food for the boom-time people.

It is sort of like their aboriginal problem, city folk are not affected by it... out of sight, out of mind, like the struggling farmers. Does it sound familiar Vivian?

During the day we had our ‘last picnic roadside lunch. We also passed a Billabong Creek of Waltzing Matilda fame.



We were in Maryborough by 4.45 PM, safe and sound after a 2300 kilometer Airport run.


Thank you Rod, all is forgiven.