Day 2 Heading for Bathurst - Lake Walpeup to Cocopara NP (near Grenfell)

After waving goodbye to our fellow campers from the comfort of our swags, we finally got our lazy bodies out of bed, breakfasted and packed up and headed out from Lake Walpeup, stopping to collect wood once we were out of the park and crossing the 143E meridian at 1100.

The Mallee scrub and wattle continued along the sides of the road, creating wonderful colours and differences in height and form.

We stopped at the river at Piangil for a cuppa before crossing over into NSW at Tooleybuc via the opening bridge.  We have never seen it open yet.

We decided to check out the Mamanga campground in Yanga NP near Balranald to have our lunch, and found it particularly attractive, with big sites right by the sides of the river ( but high up, so you can see but not reach the water). The sites are far enough away from each other to be manageable.

Next we headed across the dreaded Hay plains with their water wasting, cotton growing tendencies, and saw new irrigation trenches being put in to new paddocks which will no doubt be using more water from the river via open channels very soon.

Turning towards Griffith , we then headed for the hills, eventually reaching the Witten stock route and following it before heading into Cocoparra NP where we found ourselves a camp for the night.  We had thought that, being so off the beaten track, we would possibly be alone, but so did others and there were about half a dozen vehicles, but still plenty of room to spare. We shared the space with two mummy wallabids with large joeys in their pouches.

We had another small but lovely fire to watch burn down, before turning in early along with all the other campers.  All was quiet by 9pm and we settled into our swags on an even warmer night. We haven't needed those thermals that we packed yet.