Day 3 - Broken Hill

Written by Jocelyn

On the agenda today was a look at an almost Ghost town, Silverton. Silver and lead was discovered here in the early 1800’s before Broken Hill was settled. The population grew, the silver and lead was mined then the population shrank again.

Tyler and Brett followed the heritage walk through town for the entire 12kms while the rest of us took a short cut. We had lunch in a busy little cafe that also contained an impressive collection of antique dolls, old town memorabilia and the best tea pot collection I have seen in real life. Also interesting was the old gaol and school museum.

Again the weather was horrible – cold and windy, the kind of weather that gives you an earache.

We drove back into Broken Hill to re supply and to have a wander through town. I was really looking forward to that as there are some really gorgeous old buildings in town, but unfortunately time got away on us, so Broken Hill remains a place I have to come back to so I can have a really good look.

A highlight for Brett and Tyler was getting a photo with the Interceptor from the Mad Max movies, which were filmed around Broken Hill. We also found out that filming was starting on the next Mad Max movie about 15 kms out of town, so we took a drive out to see if we could see anything.  Unfortunately no Hollywood stars in sight, but plenty of trucks and cars driving fast backwards and forwards creating a lot of dust.

Back at camp that night we had Beef Rogan Josh for dinner cooked by Brett, and another good bottle of red wine.

Day 2 - Driving to Broken Hill

We didn’t even get out of bed until after 7.30am today. 10 hours sleep we must be on holidays.

It’s funny how often you hear people saying three’s a crowd. We have three girls on this trip aged 9, 10 and 12 and they have proven that three isn’t always a crowd. They have entertained themselves happily, making up games and running around whenever we stopped for a break. So far they have not done much school work but their imaginations have been working overtime creating scenarios for playing. 

280kms of our journey today was along the Silver City Highway between Mildura and Broken Hill. We really noticed the red dirt along here. Just a taste of what is to come the closer we get to Central Australia. The extreme flatness of the landscape here was amazing. Living in Canberra we are surrounded by mountains, but out here its flat as far as the eye can see. Its times like this tat sense of how vast this country is becomes so much stronger.

The fruit fly exclusion zone well and truely surrounds us so we were able to buy some locally grown fruit and veggies to eat while stil in this area. We stopped at a house in Wentworth that had fresh citrus, tomatoes, eggs and other foods. Fresh veggies and omelette for tea – yum!

We arrived in Broken Hill in the early afternoon and set up camp, and despite the cold we managed to sit out and sip a very nice red wine to toast our journey.