FINDING YOUR LITTLE DARLING
THE TARMAC ROAD CROSSES its arms and refuses to budge another inch outside the town of Wentworth, where the fabled Murray locks arms in a river dance with the less-travelled Darling. This is the starting point for a seven-day road trip north-east along the lifeforce of the New South Wales outback, the Darling River Run. Not your same-place-every-year-and-back road trip, that’s for sure.
Northwards, the border town’s orchards should soon submit to the Wide Brown Land – in theory – but immediately it’s clear that while the land is always wide, it’s certainly never just brown. Exhibit A, just outside Wentworth: Perry Sandhills, a shifting gypsy beachscape that dissonantly rises above fenced fields. Here you can track mysterious animal prints in the sand, and stand in wonder at the God Tree, a giant river red gum which bursts through the sand.
Arumpo Road is the more adventurous way to
