We are certainly getting better at preparing for departure as it's taking far less time and so we had no problem bettering our planned 8am departure time by 15 minutes. Leaving almost anytime can be a chore due to the Melbourne traffic and so for this trip we headed away from the city going via Yea to join the Goulburn Valley Highway at Seymour. It was certainly a more relaxing way to begin our trip than battling the Eastern Freeway or Ring Road! 

With breakfast so early, a break at Wahring for a cup of tea and a shared Tim Tam cheesecake went down well. Crossing the Murray River to leave Victoria and enter New South Wales at Tocumwal, we continued on to the Jerilderie Bakery for lunch. There were a number of storyboards around the town indicating where various incidents relating to Ned Kelly and his gang took place. The Jerilderie Post & Telegraph Office which was a target of a Kelly Gang robbery was one such place.

Not too far out of Jerilderie we turned off the Newell Highway to join the Kidman Way, a 644km length of road that will take us to Bourke. But before Bourke, we will stopover at Darlington Point tonight and Cobar tomorrow night. The Kidman Way forms part of Matilda Way, a 3096km route from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria along the backbone of the Queensland Outback. However on this trip we will only go as far as Winton on the Matilda Way before heading towards the coast at Townsville via the Dinosaur Trail.

We noticed smoke ahead and as we got closer, we could see that fire was being used to clear dry grass along the edge of water channels which presumably was the source of irrigation water for this rice growing region. Also along the edges of the road we noticed a lot of white 'fluff' and wondering what it was, we stopped to check our idea that it was cotton given we had heard cotton and well as rice was gown in this area. And indeed it was cotton, but why on the side of the road? We would learn why later!

After a fuel stop at Coleambally, around 3pm we arrived at the Darlington Point Riverside Caravan Park, our home for the night. The entrance to the caravan park is through a restored/relocated tower of a bascule bridge. A bascule bridge, sometimes referred to as a drawbridge, is a moveable bridge with a counterweight that continuously balances a span or "leaf", throughout its upward swing to provide clearance for boat traffic. This bridge was erected in 1905 and served Darlington Point until 1979.

After such a long drive we decided to stretch our legs and walk over the road bridge across the Murrumbidgee River into the Darlington Point township. Here we saw why there would be so much cotton strewn along the roadside. A truck laden with cotton bales drove through the township and we could see that the sides of the bales were open, allowing pieces of cotton to come loose. We bought some bananas because we didn't pack any fresh fruit due to quarantine laws and some baked beans for a light dinner.

It will be an early night after a very busy weekend of basketball which saw the Ringwood Hawks take out the Men's State Championship, preparing the van yesterday and today's long drive. Tomorrow we plan another early start as we head to our overnight stop at Cobar.