Day 47 Report

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Day 47- 12/7/07 - Into Brewarrina

Into Brewarina and for the first time we saw some reasonably clear water. It certainly is a much different colour to anything seen so far on the trip.

Brewarina is a pretty dodgy looking town but looks deceive. The people are all great and the local kid who causes a bit of trouble paddled the kayak. He is just overactive but is a nice enough kid. The Chinese feed for dinner was great and we are staying at Heather Geddes place. She is a local nurse with a property about 60km back up the road near where we camped a couple of days ago. It is interesting to talk to a nurse who gets NSW money compared with Qld. Nothing much has changed over the years but it does get up the nose of my wife Carol sometimes.

If you have a look at the rivers that converge upstream of here you will understand why there is usually plenty of water here. Also there is only one local irrigator. Funny how the less the irrigation the happier the people seem to be even though life might be tough.

Tomorrow it is on the river towards Bourke which one of the locals reckons is 277km on the river. The road distance less than 100km so that gives you an idea of the difference between road and river distances. Unless I can get back to Brewarina, web communication is going to be down for this distance which may be six days.

It is with regret that I announce that Bruce and Kerrie have opted not to return after their nine days off. They have been a great asset to the team. Bruce's filming and photography skills will be sorely missed and the skills that both have with the school kids has been fantastic. On the othe side, I have not lost as much weight as I thought I would but without Kerrie's great cooking it might just go.

IBeside the road about 20km back. This is the
site of the Hospital Creek massacre where a
large number of aborigines were killed around
1860. Apparently one of the local guys
dropped dead when the memorial was
being built so people lost interest		 Hospital Creek. You find it, all I could see
was a bit of a depression. You can't help but
think the landscape has pretty radically changed since then

View Satellite Map
Barwon River at Brewarina. Water at last
This is the weir at Brewarina. The story goes
that Bourke people used to pull the stop logs
out so the bolts you see are the area that has
been concreted up by local Brees
The oldest manmade structures in the world?
Fish traps on the river.I paddled through these
but got stuck a couple of times