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Published: February 14th 2006
It is dead around here!
We think they could be backpacker bones!We were up early to have a brief dip in the pool before we went to collect our car at 9.15am. First we went to the tourist info centre to pick up a key for the sculpture Symposium, just outside Broken Hill, for our nightime excursion.
We got our lovely car, Toyota Corolla, automatic and headed to our first destination, Umberumberka Reservoir, this was not very exciting. From here we went back to the Mundi Mundi plains lookout. This was cool. You can see so far that you can see the curvature of the earth! You can see for miles and it's so quiet. (we didn't see any cars)
Next was on our tourist day was an old outback historic mining town called Silverton, which used to be bigger than Broken Hill but is now just a dozen or so buildings, old ruins, a hotel, tumbleweed, red dust and squeeky name signs just like you expect. This is why we had travelled 17 hours on the train, to see the real outback, it was like a ghost town.
Our first stop was to use the phone box to ring the hire car company as we had noticed they had given us
the wrong mileage reading and could have charged us for another 60 or so kms, we rung them and they changed it easy (was it a scam?).
We then crossed the road to go into the Silverton hotel which has been used in the Mad Max films and various TV shows and commercials, they even had Mad Max's car parked outside abeit a replica. It was wicked inside full of photos, signitures, and famous people who had been there.
In our Lonely Planet book it tells you to ask to do the Silverton test, we were unsure what this was, but were about to find out!. The barmaid showed us what we had to do, put a funnel down the front of our trousers balance a potato on our foreheads and drop into the funnel. Easy!. So imagine this, we were stood at the bar in an outback pub complete with outback locals, with a funnel down the front of our trousers whilst balancing potatoes on our heads, did we look like tourists?.
The lady gave us the countdown as it was a race (this was serious stuff) and just as we dropped our potatoes we both had water poured
The Mundi Mundi plains lookout
Mundi's are normally not good but this one was cool! down our funnels. Funny!. She then gave us both a certificate and we gave a small donation to the local charities they were collecting for. She told us that some people have not seen the funny side to the 'Silverton test' and that she has even had the funnel thrown back at her, some people!. We checked out the place then headed to the Peter Browne art gallery who does some really cool paintings but are way out of our price range. From here we went to jail or gaol as they spell it, which was good, then over to the local cemetery.
From here we headed to Southern Broken Hill and to the Twin lakes for a spot of lunch, then for an unplanned 110kms drive south to the Kinchega National park to see some wildlife, we saw wild Kangaroos and Emus and the Darling river, this place was hot! some parts had an extreme fire warning and you could see the remains of burnt trees that had been in a bush fire, Gwilym told us that the trees have evolved so that they can reproduce after the fires. We don’t know how, but we thought that was cool.
The Mundi Mundi plains
This place had an earie quitness,we felt like we were in the middle of nowhere, We were! After a couple of hours of driving around the park we headed back to Broken Hill for the sunset at the Sculpture Symposium.
We arrived in plenty of time to be greeted by a couple of kangeroos. We chilled, took photos and waited for the sun to come down.
It was a clear evening so the colours of the sunset were not as good as we were hoping for. But as the sun was dropping in the west the sky in the east was turning a pretty pink colour.
After the sunset we went back to the hostel and had some tea and into bed after a busy great day.
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Dad and Anna
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What a great time
This trip to the outback sounds real real fun, and I could see what was coming as soon as you described the funnel and the spuds on your head, it's similar to a number of games i've seen befor. Great pictures and titles, love to you both Dad and Anna