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Published: September 27th 2011
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I love a sunburnt country
A land of sweeping plains
Of rugged mountain ranges
Of drought and flooding rain
We took a trip to see it
Its secrets to uncover
And found it not too shabby
But with limited mobile cover
We knew our good friends the Roffes were heading towards us on their own inland odyssey and we played phone tag with them for about a week, getting a voicemail every so often but never managing to call them when they were in town somewhere. In fact, we had just about given up hope of seeing a familiar face when we pulled into the car park of the Peterborough Visitors Centre and nearly ran Dave over.
We had morning tea with Dave, Clare, Michael and Tim and spent a nice couple of hours in Peterborough. It has the largest hall in inland South Australia, no less. It also has quite a bit of interesting railway history, but we couldn’t linger, so we left all that for another day.
Broken Hill, on the decline from its halcyon days as the site of the richest silver-lead-zinc lode in the world, is quite a nice place, with a real mixture
of things to see.
We looked in on the School of the Air, mainly because Sharon’s sister Jeanette used to be principal there. We sat in on a kindergarten lesson, which for us novices was quite a hoot. We also spoke to one of the staff members who remembered Jeanette most fondly.
The Royal Flying Doctor Service has a base in Broken Hill. The tour was interesting enough, and the short film is a real tear-jerker. Apart, that is, from the dental patient. A pleasant, friendly old bushie, he seems quite ok until he opens his mouth to reveal the most revolting set of crooked, stained, bleeding and decayed stumps you will ever see.
The mining connection we covered firstly with a trip out to the Daydream Mine and an underground tour. Interestingly the pioneer miners didn’t need to have room to lie down in their sleeping quarters – they were generally so riddled with lung disease that they could only sleep sitting up anyway.
The second part of our mine experience was a visit to the Miners’ Memorial, perched on the top of the giant mullock heap that has replaced the Barrier Range in the
middle of town. The memorial lists all the employees who have died on the job at the mines – from the first cases of lead poisoning to a veritable epidemic of heart attacks in the 1960’s to the odd “crushed by machine” or “electrocuted” these days. It was certainly a hard way to earn a living, from the time of the Daydream Mine right through to the present day.
To cover the absolute cornucopia of attractions on offer we also had a malted at Bell’s Milk Bar, stuck in the 60’s and with an interesting milk bar museum attached, looked in at the Palace Hotel, made famous in “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”, and drove out to the Sculptures in the Desert and the old town of Silverton.
From there it was an easy drive to Nyngan for a night, then Armidale, then home.
We covered 9,700 kilometres in just over 5 weeks and were really surprised at how easy the trip was. The old commodore did it with ease (and an ever-increasing number of rattles). The drinking water and engine oil we carried as a precaution remained untouched.
While we didn’t venture far away from
civilization we did get a good taste of a unique part of the country – a part that every city-dweller should visit. And do it soon, as there are a lot of visitors. Some of the rest stops, especially those that don’t have a toilet, are starting to show the effect of too many overnight camps. Perhaps people will be needed soon to direct the hoards of grey nomads (and yes, we are not far from that category ourselves) around the country, perhaps with some sort of one-way system.
Our next instalment will be in a few weeks – somewhere overseas, but we’re not sure exactly where. We’ll keep you posted.
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Jack
non-member comment
More nice pics
Yo Digger and Shaz! Thanks for more great pics! And no, I haven't forgotten how to read, so I DID read the text. Sounds like you're having a ball during the gap-year. Do you reckon you'll ever go back to work and pay taxes again? Somebody's got to keep Australia running, right? Can you let me know how to find the comments etc that other folks and you make? I can't seem to find them any more. Continue to have fun! Jack.