Menindee lakes

We skipped breaky this morning as we were eager to get to Menindee to see the lakes, and stake our claim on a nice camp ground for the next couple of days. As always we dropped into the local information centre to find out the best spot to stay and were surprised to hear that the Menindee Lake has been dry for about 8 year now! One of the higher lakes called Pamamaroo Lakes is currently being drained for SA!
We found camp site #7 in the Kinchega National Park and parked the “Tojo”, again we dropped the canoes in for a paddle, the Darling River is much wider at this spot. A long the way we did a spot of rubbish collection, but I will write more about this in the environment section. All in all if all states adopted the refund on bottles & can there might not be so much rubbish everywhere!

So much for being up at sunrise, its surprising how easy it is becoming to stay in bed for an extra ½ hour. All the preparation work we did seems to be paying off, well except for my brilliant solar shower which is completely useless. We will have to rethink this idea when we get back. We have been very good at using up left over’s each day. We drove around the Menindee lakes today and it is quite depressing to see how this has been allowed to happen. Droughts aside this is a bloody disaster. We stood on the outlet where the excess water drains back into the Darling I wonder if we will see this again. So we drove around to where the water fills Menindee lakes and that was a real sight. To look out over this great expanse of land as far as the eye could see and it is bone dry. It is really hard to imagine that this could ever be full again. We then drove round to Pamamaroo Dam which they filled up in February 08 with some water that came form QLD which they started to let out to give SA some water. The photos from Weir32 shows how little water is flowing to SA and this is only because they are actually letting some out Shame on you Howard!! We stopped and had a beer at the local which is common each day around lunch to meet some local folk and find out where to go next. It is as we expected and the local people are really nice. Back off to camp for an afternoon canoe and more rubbish