Blogs from Silverton, New South Wales, Australia, Oceania

I'm feeling a bit sleepless so take the opportunity to read up on the history of Broken Hill. The hills in which the town now sits were apparently impeding the progress of explorer Charles Sturt when he passed through here in 1844, so he called them the Barrier Range. He thought that one of them looked a bit "broken", hence the town’s name. There go all my theories about mining doing the breaking. It is good to note however that the hill that looked broken then looks even more so now; it's apparently been completely mined away. The town itself was established in 1883 by a Mr Charles Rasp, a German immigrant, after he discovered minerals which eventually proved to be the largest and richest silver and lead ore bodies on the entire planet. Mr Rasp ... read more

We were dragged out of bed by a knock at the door at 8.45am (when we were having a bit of a lie in) and Barry found a Jehovah’s Witness outside the door trying to sell us the Watchtower magazine. He was very unimpressed as we were in a van in a free camping area. He finds it bad enough that they come around to houses but this was the end for him. He firmly said no and came back inside grumbling. We had intended to go back into Peterborough to look at the Steamtown Heritage Rail Centre and a Federation Quilt but there were rain clouds approaching fast, driven by a 30 – 40kph southerly wind. Barry was worried as he’d discovered the plastic cap over the toilet pipe on the roof had gone which ... read more