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.

Hello from Tennant Creek

Internet access has been sporadic, so most of our updates will probably appear later in out trip when we are at Airlie Beach. We are in Tennant Creek right now, enjoying the mild evening 19 degrees minimum. Everyone is still travelling well and enjoying our trip. We are all looking forward to spending a few days in Lawn Hill National Park in the next few days, and just staying in the one place for a few days.

We have covered a lot of kilometres so far, and taken a lot of photographs, so as time permits there will be more on here to show you what we have been up to.

Until then...

xxx

That's one big rock!

SOOC this is what we saw yesterday. This was taken at sunset from the roof rack of a landcruiser 4wd. It is worth coming to see Uluru, every Australian should see it. Foreigners are welcome too lol

Day 1

Day 1

Tendrils of excitement started to wind around us this morning. There was still a bit to do before we could leave but the end was in sight. We ended up leaving at 10.30am a bit later than planned, we met up with the McDonalds near Sutton, then the adventure was begun.

Lunch was at a chilly Gundagai where the Dog on the Tuckerbox resides. The car temperature gauge showed 10 degrees while we ate sandwiches and chocolate cake (leftover from Hayley’s birthday on Saturday 21^st)

Next stop was a balmy 15 degrees to eat some of our fruit before crossing into the fruit fly exclusion zone. These zones are set up to try and stop the spread of fruit fly through the agricultural areas in Australia. After eating the apples and mandarins we jumped back in the car only to have to stop a few kilometres down the road to get rid of the tomatoes and capsicums too.

By this stage the sun was well into the afternoon sky and Balranald was looking about an hour and a half too far away. So in the spirit of things not going to plan we decided that Hay looked like a good first nights stop instead. This meant that Day 2 will be 131 kilometres longer than planned, but as Day 1 at 640 kms was the longest in our itinerary it doesn’t put us too far out.

Crossing the Hay plain was a different experience than it has been in the past. Normally it is bros and dusty. This time there were areas of lush green growth and stretches of water pooled alongside the road. The skies were overcast all day, which means there is still the possibility of more rain in this area.

As we were only staying one night in Hay we unpacked the bare necessities and even left the campers hooked up. The Hay Services Club provided a courtesy bus that collected us from the Big 4 Caravan Park took us the club where we filled up on Chinese food, then dropped us back to the camping park again. Our bus driver on hearing that we had not been to Hay before took us for a quick tour on the way home.

Into bed before 9.30pm for a good sleep before another big drive to Broken Hill on Day 2