Balranald to Narrandera, New South Wales, 25 to 26 July 2024.

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View from the road, between Balranald and Narrandera.

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Give way!

You have to watch out for those trees in Western New South Wales.  One moment they seem to be far away and not moving, and you look away and suddenly they’re upon you like a weeping angel, or like getting caught between two elephant seal bulls shaping up for a harem dominance contest.  You have to give way to them.  No point arguing with a tree.

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These ones are not moving.  They’re held in place by the clouds.

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It has got so hot that the end of the road is melting, the sky is seeping into the land and objects are becoming abstract.

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Crop dusting in a canola oil field.

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The object here is to drop the superphosphate (or whatever the chemicals are) over the vehicles to make them grow bigger.

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I doesn’t seem to be working though.

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And then there’s the insect apocalypse.

Hopefully you’ve heard of this.  It’s a real thing, not merely a facetious comment.  Catastrophic declines in insect populations over the past 50 years or so in many countries, potentially imperiling bird populations, other forms of life, flowering plants and the food we eat.  The main cause seems to be agricultural chemicals.  Unfortunately, we are a plague species and it is our responsibility to address that.  Sometimes it seems as though not everyone is focused on rectifying the problems we cause.

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Great “drums” of cotton.

We had been seeing tufts of cotton at the side of the road and I had been wondering if it were wild cotton.  But no, we were entering a cotton growing area.

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They look quite picturesque in their own way, wrapped up in different colours, while the trees in the background drift up above the horizon (Where are they going?).

Cotton is controversial too though.  It is a water-intensive crop.  Is it really a sustainable crop for an arid landscape?  Is it taking up too much water that should be prioritised for other uses including food crops and wildlife?  Is it contributing to rising salinity that may not have been properly addressed and may even imperil the whole Murray Darling Basin?  How much time do we have to answer these questions, or perhaps just act on them?

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In the sky there were raptors wheeling around that I later found to be black kites (distinctive tails).

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There were many black kites in the sky.

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There were many many black kites in the sky.

(Click for a larger image if you can’t see them).

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Murrumbidgee River.

We are just outside Narrandera now, in Murrumbidgee Valley National Park.

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McCaughey’s Lagoon.

This was originally created by Sir Samuel McCaughey as a resource for farming in the late nineteenth century, but is now a wetland conservation area and nature reserve.

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Murrumbidgee River.

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Australasian Darter.

We have reached Narrandera and checked in at a caravan park on the south side of the river.  This is at a nature reserve on the other side.

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Narrandera Silo Art.

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Narrandera’s original town water tank, constructed ion 1889 or 1890.

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A cormorant drying its wings, back at the nature reserve.

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Nature reserve views.

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Egret and cormorant.

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Cormorants.

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