Blogs from Broken Hill, New South Wales, Australia, Oceania - page 3

Ok. Long pants? Short pants? Actually it wasn’t really that cold (26°C), just a lot cooler than we had been accustomed to over the last 4 weeks. Tempted by the potential views and description in Tourist brochures, we headed for the Broken Earth Restaurant for lunch. Set high up on the overburden heap overlooking the city of Broken Hill, this ultra-modern building offered stunning views of the city and surrounds, fabulous dining, galleries and a memorial to those who have lost their lives over the years in the mines in the Broken Hill area. The lunch menu sounded great but unfortunately our options were somewhat limited to a few as a power surge earlier in the morning had knocked out the fryer and the coffee machine. None-the-less the chosen gourmet pizza and bottle of wine were ... read more

Today is the day we start our journey. The Day is met with mixed feelings, excitement for the travel ahead, and sadness with the goodbyes. As if saying goodbye to your children isn't hard enough, throw a grandchild into the mix and the goodbyes are really tough! As we make our way from Mildura, destination Muttawintji N.P located about 130km from Broken Hill, the weather report kept telling us ego expect rain, 20-40ml - huh, what would they know, it's a magical 20 degree day, not a cloud in the sky, or a breath if wind, just what we ordered. We arrive at the N.P, tired & weary, set up camp, beer in hand, night sky filled with stars, couldn't possibly be raining tomorrow, or at least the morning, plan to get up early, do the ... read more

Today we went with Robert and Tracy, in their four wheel drive, to visit the Darling River and the Menindee Lakes Region, situated in the Kinchega National Park. It was a wonderful day. The Menindee Lakes are situated approx. 110 km's south east of Broken Hill. They consist of a chain of shallow ephemeral freshwater lakes connected to the Darling River to form a storage system. When the storage system is full it holds over three and a half times the water of Sydney Harbour and provides a haven for water birds of all kinds.We saw quite a lot of birdlife today. Pelicans, cormorants, a spoonbill and lots of other water birds and smaller finches, parrots and the like. Several explorers have passed through this area including, Burke and Wills (1860 expedition) and Charles Sturt (1844). ... read more

We woke to a wet day today. We had a long drive ahead of us as we wanted to reach Broken Hill by tonight. First stop was Cobar, to get petrol, and then we drove for quite some time. We stopped at a rest area to have a break and a nice hot cuppa. There were lots and lots of wild goats roaming along the roadside. Surprisingly, we hardly saw any kangaroos although, there were a lot of emus. We dove on to Wilcannia and filled up our tanks for the outback drive to Broken Hill, we had a lot of kilometres to drive and wanted to make sure that we did not run out of petrol. It was lovely to finally arrive at Broken Hill, we were tired, wet and cold. It didn't take us ... read more

Esperance to Streaky Bay South Australia via the Nullarbor We got away from Esperance early morning and headed for Caiguna Roadhouse our first overnight stop. Our morning tea and fuel stop was at Norseman just at the start of the Nullarbor. On our way through these little towns I was noticing some really strange names - one of the first was ”Gibson Soak” the next was” Grass Patch” and the funniest was “Salmon Gums”. Our next fuel stop was some roadhouse that I can’t remember the name of (Jim – Balladonia). We stopped there fuelled up and had some lunch in our vans. Jane had made Alan’s lunch then poured him a pineapple juice. He immediately knocked it over so Jane cleaned that up a... read more