Day 3 - Menindee to Broken Hill

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Woke up to a glorious day on the Darling River. We did hear our grey nomad mates trundle off at about six so I’m glad we got rid of them. Was a bit of a bummer that the rear tyre was completely flat, especially after that google tip. But we were only a few ks out of Menindee and this seemed like a good opportunity to check to see if anyone had died over night, so I rang the local servo. The lady asked me “wheres youse at”. Which was a great question as I hadn’t seen my hat since we started out. With the help of the car manual I changed tyres, noting that I didn’t use Cyril due to the close bond that we are developing, took the spare into town. Told the story about the grey nomads to the servo guy, clearly there’s not a dentist in Menindee, and headed back to our camp. Due to complete and utter disorganisation we took an age to pack up. We had a lovely drive around the park checking out the old homestead and the shearing shed. Then we headed back in to the town to grab the tyre (seemed to be an uneventful night in Menindee, unless the sign guy started late). Had a great chat to the young indigenous guy at the servo who hadn’t heard of Uluru. So I explained that it was Ayres Rock but we weren’t allowed to call it that anymore and he wanted to know why. I changed topic in case I got banned from the Travelblog site. We drove the 100 odd k to Broken Hill. Having learnt a lesson we rang ahead and booked accommodation at the Imperial Hotel which is beautiful. Broken Hill is very impressive, there are a lot of pubs, an interesting (although a bit eclectic) regional art gallery (which was somewhat ruined by an older fat lady in tights who insisted on playing the grand piano even though she couldn’t play and her friends kept clapping which didn’t help) and explored the main street. Went to the Palace Hotel which is apparently where part of Priscilla is filmed and had a lovely meal at the Astra. Only in Australia could you travel to the ends of the earth and order a Piccolo Latte which turned up perfectly made.

Things we learnt:

- Check your tyres before you leave in case

- If you have a flat have it at your campsite so you can take your time



- Don’t start conversations about indigenous topics with indigenous people you just look like a white Wayne Kerr

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