Week 1 - Home to Broken Hill


We left on Wednesday 2nd May and headed over the Blue Mountains towards Mudgee. After the heavy traffic on the M7 the drive over the mountains and along the road to Lithgow was great. Then we turned onto the Castlereagh Highway towards Mudgee. The Castlereagh must be the worst highway surface in Australia (although we may well be wrong). Mudgee is a favourite of ours and we arrived at the Riverside Caravan Park in good time.


Mandy was looking for the Doctor, Doctor but couldn't find him anywhere! After a good sleep overnight we headed for a long stretch through Dubbo, Narromine, Trangie, Cobar and Nyngan before a free camp near Canbelego.
We stopped for a break at Dubbo and Nanna introduced her travelling companion, Moodonna. Moodonna is a cow and is really excited to be on the trip.  See if you can find her in the photos to come!

As we passed through Trangie we stopped for lunch beside the river. We sent a text to a friend who lives and works on a property out of Trangie and he joined us for a catch up and a cuppa. It was great to see James and have a chat.

While we waited for James, Nanna found some horses of course.

After lunch we headed off through Cobar and Nyngan before pulling into our first free camp for the trip.  The Florida Rest Area was a great spot, flat and sandy far enough off the highway and with three other campers setting up. The flies and midges were a pest around dusk but it was a great introduction to our free camping.  



The next day was a short leg into Wilcannia (only 300km). The roads from Dubbo to here are pretty good and very, very straight although we seemed to be going uphill all the time. We pulled into caravan park Warrawong On The Darling and set up next to a billabong of the Darling River. The river itself flows only 100m away and we loved the seclusion of this very picturesque location. Ah, the serenity!

 The bushwalks around the park were spectacular and we walked along way after such a long drive.

We stayed here for 2 days and enjoyed bike rides, a spot of fishing (need to get some floats as the snags are many), a fly of the drone and, of course Happy Hours!



On a bend in the river an ancient fossilised coral reef has been exposed.  
We left the next day and headed for Broken Hill. The roads here are awesome, although the emus, roos and goats are everywhere beside the road. The amount of roadkill is phenomenal, we wouldn't like to be driving at night. Nanna even had a drive while Pa "relaxed" in the passenger seat. We made good time and arrived in Broken Hill in time to set up, visit the minerals museum and have happy hour with some friends from the previous caravan park. 

 The next day we visited many areas of Broken Hill. It is a very interesting town which was once the second largest town in NSW after silver, lead and zinc was discovered here in the late 1800s. The Broken Hill Proprietary company was formed and made many millions out of the mines. Broken Hill is also a very artistic town with many artists living here. We visited Pro Hart's studio along with a number of others which were very interesting. The world's largest painting on canvas is housed here and took over two years to paint! We also visited the miner's memorial on top of the spoil heaps from the mines which overlooks the town.
 The Palace Hotel - featured in many movies including Pricilla, Queen of the Desert.

 Part of the Big Picture with the desert landscape made up in the foreground.  Amazing!

Part of the line of lode which is the area that's been mined.

Nanna got tired and wanted a rest but she couldn't sit on the park bench!


 One of Pro Hart's Rolls Royces.
On our final day in Broken Hill we visited Silverton which is where many films were made including Mad Max 2. 





 The pub is very old and filled with character. The wonkeys (wild donkeys) outside made Nanna feel at home. 



We had a good look around this very old town then went for a drive to the dam (which is very dry). Nanna found some brumbies and wanted to catch one to take home but I said they wouldn't fit in the van.
We even took some footage of the Pathy driving the road to Qld with the drone. The Mundi Mundi plains are extremely flat and go for hundreds of miles into the west of Qld. You can see the curvature of the Earth on the horizon.

To finish the day we visited the sculptures in the desert which are best viewed at sunset.

We leave Broken Hill tomorrow having been on the road for one week.  The next week looks like fun with lots of free camping and outback viewing. Hooroo!





Comments

  1. AnonymousMay 8, 2018 at 3:52 PM

    That looks like so much fun! And I LOVE Moodonna!!!
    Seriously though, what is a midge???? They don't sound fun! xx

    ReplyDelete

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