April A- Z Challenge

Ivanhoe

Location:        Rural New South Wales

Price:              FREE

Why Go:         Ok, there’s a bit of a story about this one

Article:            https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-09/outback-town-ivanhoe-fights-for-survival/10723852

Ivanhoe is a very small township on the Cobb Highway between the Lachlan and Darling rivers in New South Wales, Australia.  It is located within the Central Darling Shire local government area.  Ivanhoe functions as a service centre for the surrounding area.  The township is characterised by a particularly wide main street. At the 2016 census, Ivanhoe had a population of 196 people.

Why Visit?

This is a damn good question, and it comes with a very convoluted tale of explanation.

As some of you might recall, hubby and I caravanned around Australia and one of our stops was the lakes of Menindee.

These were fabulous and given there was a free camp we stayed a number of days.  One day I went out for a bike ride which included travelling down a back road which wasn’t in poor condition … it was atrocious.

Ungraded, rock strewn, no fences and very large bulls wandering hither and thither, I was glad to head back, but when I did return to the caravan, I realised hubby was thinking of taking this route to our next stop, as it would cut 100km off our trip.

Now I did try and persuade him otherwise, but he wouldn’t listen, so we had the 3-hour drive from hell.  We bounded and bumped our way along that road, the towing mirrors fell off … one broke, the dogs got sick … lots of vomit, we cracked the windscreen … yelling husband, and then we hit bitumen, or rather what constituted bitumen … as we rolled into Ivanhoe.

Ivanhoe is a dying town (see article above), but to us it was the most wonderful sight in the world, and perhaps surprisingly, they had a sense of humour.

And here’s where it gets awful strange, so whenever we stopped to chat with other caravanners, hubby would regale the tale of our trip to Ivanhoe, and about halfway through the others would exclaim … we did that.

So, perhaps there’s hope for the town after all.

© A-DAW Arts