Broken Hill to Orroroo

We travelled 320 kilometres travelled today, from Broken Hill to Orroroo.  Peterborough was the only town in between.

The road was really straight through low scrubby vegetation and very few trees. 

The main east-west rail line ran beside the road and in the distance were endless hills. A couple of one- horse settlements on the way with a station was the only sign of human habitation, that and station gates.

With no trees to block the view you could see far, far into the distance. Every now and then we crossed a creek bed which you could predict by a meandering line of trees hugging the edge of it.

Someone had set up a washing line on the edge of the road. A hills hoist was rotating in the winds, bras and jocks flapping proudly. Underneath was a white plastic laundry basket. That would have to be pegged down. Very clever!  We've seen a lot of funny road-side things, including trees festooned with shoes, shirts, bras, bears etc…..

There were warning signs about a fruit fly check (which we didn't know about before today) so stopped and cooked up the vegetables we had only just purchased in Broken Hill and ate all the fruit. Tummies were full when we got there. Yes there was a checkpoint with numerous office, but it was unmanned. Oh well, we did the right thing. Soup for tea tonight.

We walked around Peterborough in a cold wintery windy day. This town developed with the rail so there was plenty of rail type artefacts about, including a steam museum. The Main Street was full of lovely buildings.


It was very windy with severe weather warnings and Greg wrestled the van against the elements. Towing the van was tough going and the head and side winds slowed down our trip. Finally we stopped for the day at Orroroo.

Another lovely town with a great sense of community pride.

We were amazed by the size of the 300 year old red river gum on a creek line; and enjoyed the old buildings, gardens and entry displays.

I topped up the fridge with yummy fruit and vegetables from the local shop. Think it'll be haloumi cheese (from the Atherton tablelands), mushrooms and grilled vegetables tomorrow night. Yum!

It was a wild night with the wind buffeting and rocking us to sleep together with the odd downpour of rain but we were cosy tucked up inside. Rifter snored away oblivious to it all.

Broken Hill

 

Broken Hill reminds me of Kalgoorlie; a mining history in an isolated harsh environment. It's a lovely city with some beautiful Federation and Victorian buildings and many classic tin miners houses with bull nose verandas.

 

Sitting beside the main street is a line of mullock dumps from the silver lead zinc ore body that has generated over $109 billion; and perched right on top of one is a miners memorial (800 miners lost their lives) and spectacular restaurant called Broken Earth.  We tried to go up but it has been closed for six months. Disappointed as I think it would been a spectacular view over the city.

Broken Hills is also a creative city with many artists residing here. I visited Pro Harts gallery.

I can see the country side and harsh environment reflected in their work.

We drove 25 kms northwest out to Silverton; a historical area where silver was discovered in the 1880s. It had a short life and at one stage tbe population was 3000,  but within twenty years it was all over. The almost deserted town is now full of art galleries, museums and a great pub.

A lot of the buildings were moved to Broken Hill and all that remains are the sandstone building including several churches. It's other claim to fame is that a lot of the iconic Australia movies,like Mad Max, Razorback, Pricilla and lots do TV advertisements, were filmed here. Delicious soup in the pub on such a cold winter's day hit the spot.

On the way out we drove 14 miles into Day Dream tin mine where we  saw the remains of an old mine, smelter and township.

The mining tour was interesting and both of us commented later that it was amazing that they could do tours in an this 1882 mine. But what a bleak spot on a cold day, a tough place to live.

 
We tried to go to the "living sculpture park" but "no dogs" so missed out. We finished the day with dinner at the Musician Club.

Minindee

We heard about Minindee Lakes from quite a few people and decided it would be a good spot  for a few days. Minindee is about 100 kms south of Broken Hills. The lakes create a  storage system for the Darling River before it flows on into the Murray River at Wentworth. There are quite a few interconnecting lakes and in the past they supported orchards and grapevines. Not much of that left now.

Minindee township is old but there aren't many historical buildings left. It doesn't have much "personality". However Bourke and Wills set up camp on the edge of the Darling. It was the last outpost before setting out on their journey to Gulf country to try and determine if there was an inland sea. They both perished on this trip.

We bumped ten teeth-rattling kilometres over a corrugated dirt road in to the Bourke and Wills camp spot on a river and next to the Pamamaroo Lake outlet regulator. I took Rifter for a walk to watch the sunset over the lake while Greg set up camp.

Got talking to a couple of men who had caught some lovely sized yellow belly fish.

We were "natural" camping, that means camping with just our battery power and storage water. Came back to a very frustrated husband. For some unknown reason the battery system wouldn't work and that meant no lights or water. Ahhh! All the tools were out and things pulled apart... Lots of muttering and choice words. No joy. Managed to organise something to eat then crawl into bed. After a very cold night (-1C) we slowly emerged out from under as many blankets as we could find. Greg had another go at repair in day light and "fixed" the problem. Some connection had rattled off; he's SO clever, and practical. That engineering puzzle-solving brain in action.

Too cold to get out the kayak so spent the day watching the huge variety of bird life, reading, solving puzzles and I actually got out my sewing. Chilly though. Went across to our neighbour's camp fire after dinner.

The next day we drove through Kinchega National Park. It was cosy in the car with the heater on and so I finally warmed up my toes. Check out the flood levels of the rive.r

We drove along the edge of a meandering Darling River covered with majestic river red gums.

Awesome! Lots of beautiful birds. Daddy Emu and his children ran past.

It was a lovely drive on a heavily-textured, grey cracking-clay road that would be impassable in the wet. On the river bank was the boiler from the riverboat PS Providence.

Unfortunately it blew up after the crew kept stoking an empty boiler. I think there was only one survivor; a paying passenger.  The Chinese crew member was blown up into a tree but died later.  They were all buried at a nearby homestead and we checked out the 1870s ruins and cemetery.


Further away from the river the country changed to black-soil flood plains with coolibar trees and then it quickly changed again to sand plains and sand dunes. This was dry looking country devoid of trees. Equally amazing.

We looked at the historic shearing shed where six million sheep has passed through the stands in the 92 years it was operational.

That night we made our own campfire and it was warm and cosy sitting on the banks of the river with a full moon listening to the mopoke and barking owl.

It wasn't quite as I'd imagined but it was very nice not to be in a caravan park. I enjoyed camping out for a few days. Shame we didn't have the camp oven packed. Nothing beats a campfire.