Ford's Bridge - Population 4!

A town with a population of 4, and a pub! Of course we had to take a look. We travelled the 60km dirt road with Peter and Annette, a couple from Wollongong whom we met back in Nyngan and who appeared again at the same caravan park in Bourke. The Warrego Hotel at Ford's Bridge is said to be the only mud brick hotel still standing/operating in NSW. We arrived, parked adjacent to the 'beer garden' complete with 4 dogs, 3 pigs, 4 chooks and 3 horses, all adorning the back yard of the pub. This was typically rural. We entered the pub to be met by 2 of the 4 people inhabiting the 'town'. The publicans were a husband and wife team who happened to stroll into the pub in October 2009 and decided to buy it. They took over in February this year and genuinely seemed to love the place despite the isolation. Enter inhabitant No. 3 - their 12-year-old daughter. This girl had come from a school of 800 students in Queensland to a Distance Education class of 5 via the Bourke School of the Air. She seemed shell-shocked and was very hesitant about talking of her experiences with Distance Education! Inhabitant No. 4 was an older daughter who was off somewhere riding horses. The publicans then stated that the population wasn't 4 but 6 as there were 2 people who lived in the caravan park next door. Try as we did, we couldn't see anything that even remotely resembled a caravan park - only an overgrown paddock with a couple of extremely old, and what looked to be deserted, caravans. But apparently, that's where inhabitants 5 & 6 lived. So the population was actually 6! We were told that Friday nights were a bit on the quiet side but on Saturday nights the place really pumped with the bar near to brimming with some locals who would travelled 135kms to join in the fun at their 'local'. We girls had a lemon squash, the guys a beer, a few laughs and left in awe of people who had the capacity, unlike us, to be perfectly happy living in remote, sparsely populated communities of 6. In fact, they loved it!