into the Flinders . Our meeting point would be Narrabri in NSW .
A few months out from the start date , all weather indications were showing it as being nice and sunny for most of the trip . It wasn ’ t until a couple of weeks out from setting off that it all changed and massive storms cells were rolling across most of NSW and southern Queensland . Thanks to these storm cells I would end up leaving a day earlier than anticipated to try and get ahead of the rain before meeting up with my brother at Narrabri .
The first day after setting off and clearing some moisture from my eyes , perhaps forming as tears from saying goodbye to my amazing wife and two daughters , I was met with nothing but sunshine and an open road full of coming adventures and possibilities .
The camp site for the night was at Cranky Rock Nature Reserve just out of Warialda . It was a quaint campground with chickens , horses and peacocks roaming freely around . I was joined at dinner by one of the horses who took a liking to some spilt food on my seat and began licking it off for me .
In the morning I was met by an amazing sunrise over the rock formation within the grounds . A perfect way to start the day . As I wondered back to pack up camp a couple of drops began to fall from the sky so pack up was done pretty quick and before too long I was on the road again to get ahead of the rain . While I managed to stay ahead of the rain for most of the day I got hit pretty hard about an hour out of Narrabri where I had to take respite for a while , eventually making it to where I met my brother .
While our first night plans of camping were dashed we did find a motel for the night and bunkered down while it poured all night .
The next morning our maps were programmed to hit the dirt out of Narrabri on our way to Lightning Ridge . Today would be our first day riding together on what would be the beginning of our adventure alongside each other . Well actually hold that thought as approximately 10 kilometres into our first dirt track we came across a flowing body of water lapping the one metre flood marker .
Well , that put an end to that track , and we turned back towards the bitumen . While trying to find another dirt track to take to get to Lighting Ridge all we were seeing was endless paddocks completely filled with water . Then crackling over our Bluetooth coms was the decision
to ride the tarmac into Lightning Ridge and adjust our route for the following day to get back off into the dirt . We found a nice caravan park , The Opal Caravan Park . Here we were met with an amazing sunset which provided a perfect opportunity for some awesome photographs .
From Lightning Ridge , we set course to get to the two destinations that were on our list : Lyndon and Mount Charlotte before trekking through to Bourke .
We navigated to the road we needed to be on however yet again quickly realised that the copious amounts of rain would dash our efforts to make it to Lyndon and Mount Charlotte as the “ road ” essentially turned into a mud track which then turned into custard and on the verge of quicksand . In fear of being sucked into the abys we found an alternate road only a few kilometres back from where we were which was at least rideable all be it still quite slippery and lined with some not so smart emus who were eager to get a close up look at my brothers bike , thankfully though not quite close enough to get a taste of plastic or rubber . We eventually made it into Bourke or as they call it the Back o ’ Bourke . Rain again dashing any hope of setting camp , so
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