Day 37 Thursday 23rd February

As we were leaving Hay this morning we filled up with diesel, then discovered our second flat tyre on the van in two days (and it was the same tyre). The first one had a screw in it, this one was a piece of wire.
We finally left Hay and headed towards West Wyalong, 255 kms away. For the first 80 kms the landscape was unchanged and looked like this -






Suddenly we saw a crop of sunflowers on one side of the road and on the other, well off the road, were olive trees.







So there isn't a lot of spectacular scenery down this way. In the photo above, just below the horizon, the darker line is the olive grove.

John Oxley was the first European to investigate this area in 1817, saying "from want of timber, grass and water, it would never be inhabited by civilised man". (I can see why he thought this.) However squatters began to settle in 1833, introducing sheep and cattle. In 1893, gold was discovered. West Wyalong has a crooked main street, following the original bullock track that curved around trees and gold diggings.
These are some of the murals highlighting the pioneering past.










This second world war plane - a Douglas DC3 Dakota - is in the Lions Club park next to were we are staying. I couldn't find any significance of it being in this location except that it was donated to the West Wyalong Lions Club, so they put it in their park as a tourist attraction.





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Location:West Wyalong