Sedan Dip, Wills Development Road 19 – 22 August 2015

Drove on to Burke and Wills Road House which is stuck right in the middle of a 500Km stretch of mainly single track road. As the only structure along the road, it is very popular, with everybody from 4 wagon B Quads, to little campers stopping. It has everything you need to refresh yourself and prepare for the next part of the trip, from fuel and food to a cold beer and a donga to sleep it off!

After a break, we set off on the Wills Development Road towards Sedan Dip. While the land is flat, the country side is constantly changing, from thick shrubs, to isolated trees and then to scrubby grass. However the closer we got to Sedan Dip the drier the country side became, until there were just endless gibber plains with brown tuffs of dry grass popping up. Sedan Dip is just a locality - no houses, just a race course, arena and yards, which are used for the annual combined rodeo, race day and camp draft. We set up camp across the track from the site, as we knew from experience just how noisy they can get.

The entire three days is organising by the local community, with local men and women testing out their skills. We caught up with friends who have a property nearby and saw their beautiful new baby.

On Friday we watched the camp draft, where riders have to cut out a cow and then herd it around a course – very hard to do, but some riders made it look easy. On Saturday they had their race day – 6 sprint races using local horses and riders. Most of the women took the opportunity to get dolled up and even the stockmen looked very smart. It was a lot of fun and we broke even, so we had a good day. It finished with a gyro-chopper that buzzed the race track and dropped lollies for the kids – can’t imagine this happening in the city! On Sunday morning we went to see the bronco and bull riding. They catch wild animals to ride and all the local stockmen attempt to stay on them for a set time. It is really exciting to watch, but judging by the various injuries we saw, also very dangerous. The whole event was a credit to the organisers – just shows what community spirit still exists in the country.