A month in Sydney – camping day 6: Lightning Ridge to The Pilliga | alison richards

After sleeping in a real bed for a night in Lightning Ridge, it was time to hit the road again. We drove from there to a place called Cumborah, then up to a place called The Grawin. I'd heard about Grawin from my Dad, who spent some time in Walgett and around the area a few years back. He told me about this strange area near Lightning Ridge that was even more quirky than the Ridge - of course, I had to go and have a look for myself!

This area is a group of opal fields, with piles of dirt everywhere. There are also signs everywhere telling people to watch where they walk - opal mines are just big holes in the ground and not always visible. We drove through this weird golf club, where the golf greens were the roads in and out. Apparently this is a place to eat and get a drink, but maybe we were too early and missed the party... Regardless, we did a drive around the area then turned back - it was just a little too weird for me.

We stopped off at Cumborah and looked at the cemetery - I don't ever really see any old cemeteries like that in Sydney. It must be a hard life out there.

On the way to Grawin… I made Josh stop the car and take a photo of this dirt – its so beautiful and red!

Cumborah. The servo has seen better days!

We drove back to civilisation(ish) at Walgett, picked up a bottle of wine and some food, then got on the Come By Chance road. This started off as an asphalt road, but turned into a dirt road the further we drove. We were looking for its namesake, a place called Come By Chance that I'd seen on a list of weird Australian place names and decided to go. The locality was named after a sheep station of the same name, which is where our Google maps navigation was trying to send us. After turning off, bumping along a dirt road and shooing away an emu, we decided we were going the wrong way, and went back to the "main" road. We drove a little bit further and found it in the end!

We amused ourselves by looking at the horizon, which was shimmering and bleeding into the ground. It was such a weird illusion, brought on because it was just so flat out there

Lots of sheep were out grazing along the road, under the watchful eyes of very well-trained sheepdogs. Good doggos.

And of course I had to have a photo with the sign.

There was very little in Come By Chance – this cemetery was one of the main attractions!

The Come By Chance general store, which was not open… the rest of the area consisted of a few old houses, a public loo and not much else.

We pushed on, making it to Pilliga and then heading down Cypress Way / Gwabegar Road to Baradine then into the Pilliga National Park. We were going to camp for the night at a place called Dandry Gorge, at the Sculptures in the Scrub campsite. As someone who is not much of a camper, I was surprised that there were so many nice, free campsites in NSW. The only time I'd really been camping in NSW was down the south coast at a commercial park with cabins and swimming pools. It was so much more genuine pulling into a beautiful spot in the bush. Yes, there weren't any showers, but they had loos and BBQ's and firepits and billions of stars overhead.