Not Before Time

It’s Friday, 22 May, and we’re in Bourke now – we left Broken Hill after being stuck in the van for 2 days due to rain.

There’s been quite a bit of rain in the area over the last few days which is great for the area, but not so great for us.

All the rain has brought out the wildlife. On the road between Broken Hill and Cobar we saw so many birds and animals –eagles, kites, hawks, kangaroos, emus, cattle and sheep, and lots of feral goats. I must admit, when I saw the goats my mind turned to thoughts of Nepalese Goat Curry, and roasted leg of kid the way Maggie Beer cooked it on The Cook and The Chef the other night. Hmmm, I must have been hungry .

We stopped overnight at Cobar and visited the Great Western Hotel which claims to have the longest lace work verandah in the State, or the Southern Hemisphere, depending on who you believe . This is a great hotel to have a drink in, especially at happy hour, between 5pm and 6pm – everyone talks to you. We met a lovely old guy who seems to have a mysterious past, some sort of government job – James Bond comes to mind! I guess it depends on whether you believe what you are told, but he was a lot of fun to talk to. The locals were also full of information about work in the area etc so it was good talking to them.

There isn’t any work around the Cobar area, so we headed off to Bourke. With all the rain, the area is really green.

We’ve been told there isn’t too much work around this area either, but we’ve booked in for 3 nights to give us a chance to check out the area.

We’re staying at the Kidman Rest Caravan Park which is a lovely park near the banks of the Darling River. It’s really pretty, the amenities are fantastic and the people are very friendly.

When we checked out the pool, there were quite a few frogs having a swim, including this really strange looking one – not sure what sort it is, but it’s quite cute in an ugly sort of way.

They have a good campfire area where they host camp oven dinners on Wednesday and Friday nights for $15/head, including entertainment. We didn’t eat there but we did go along to listen to the music for a while and it wasn’t too bad.

The following morning we went for a long walk down to the river and then into town to check out the sites. There are quite a few historical buildings

The old wharf has been reconstructed, but I think the river must have been a lot higher in the days of the original wharf. There are some huge river gums next to the wharf which are home to the large flocks of cockatoos in the area.

Later in the afternoon we dropped in to the Northy – the Back to Bourke Hotel for a drink. It’s a very basic pub, but friendly. The pub doesn’t do meals, but the roadhouse next door does, and you can take them into the pub to have with your drink. Mel behind the bar is really nice – her uncle owns the pub and she’s currently managing it for him. We met a group of young guys in town for some shearing work. Unfortunately due to all the rain the area has had, they hadn’t been able to start work – they were hoping it would start the following day.

On Sunday morning we went for another long walk, this time to a different part of the river then in the afternoon we went on the paddle steamer tour down the river which was quite pleasant. Too many people though – we should have done it on Saturday when only about half a dozen people went on the boat trip. Never mind.

We really like this area, but since there’s no work we’ll move on.

We went for a drive out to Silverton today. Silverton was a town of roughly 3000 people until the boom in Broken Hill, and these days it’s just about a ghost town – I think the current population is 50. Quite a few Australian movies have been made there, including Mad Max II, and Pricilla Queen of the Desert. It’s an interesting place to go see – a number of ruins have been left in place, and in some instances signage has been put up to let you know what the buildings used to be. There are also quite a few restored buildings such as the Municipal Offices, the Surveyors Cottage and the Silverton Gaol which is now a (very good) museum in which we spent a couple of hours.

The Silverton Hotel has been used in lots movies and advertisements. They have a fair amount of film memorabilia inside and plenty of beer which of course we had to taste. There were a lot of people around town – not sure if this is the norm, but I had the feeling it was partly because it was mother’s day. A lot of family groups were at the pub and café for lunch.

Day Dream Mine

We wanted to have a look at the old Day Dream Mine near Silverton. Not that we wanted to go down the mine, neither of us are keen on going into mine shafts these days , but we still like to look at mine sites. Mining first started here in 1882, before Broken Hill was discovered, and continued until 1983. Boys as young as 8 years old used to work in the mine. To get to the mine, after turning off the highway there’s a 20 minute drive on a well graded dirt road.

Just before you go into the mine area there are ruins of the Day Dream township which had a population of around about 500 people.

About 10km from Silverton is the Umberumberka Reservoir which has a lovely picnic spot. The landscape around Silverton and Broken Hill looks pretty dry,

but the reservoir is quite full. It dates from 1915.
The Broken Hill Veteran and Vintage Car Club had a run on today too and all the cars were parked at the picnic spot. Amongst others, there were some great FJ Holdens, and Morris Minors, but these 2 were just beautiful – a Mercedes and a Flying Standard

Over the next couple of days we’ll be visiting some of the art galleries.

We stayed in Whyalla again for a couple of nights after we left Port Gibbon. This gave us a chance to catch up with laundry and David got to do a few bits and pieces on the van. We actually had some grass to park on – that was a novelty. Don’t think we’ve had a grass site since we were in Casino Village a couple of years ago.

We’re now in Broken Hill. We’ve been here before, but probably 25 years or so ago and neither of us remember much about the town. We were surprised at how big the place is – it’s very spread out. On the way in, one thing that caught my eye was the size of the cemetery – it’s massive! I’ve always thought Melbourne cemetery was huge, but this one just seemed to go on for ever. The other thing about BH is the colours – it reminds me of Alice Springs in that the air is so clear all the colours are more vivid. No wonder so many artists have lived/are living here.

We went out and wandered the town – there are some beautiful Victorian and Federation style buildings here and it appears that there is a strong effort in preserving them.

There are also some great miner’s cottages, but I haven’t taken any photos of them yet. Hopefully I’ll get some in the next couple of days.
There’s a good view of the town from the Broken Earth Café Restaurant, located on the highest point of the Line of Lode mullock dumps which cross the city. This is also where you can access the Miner’s Memorial, which records the deaths of over 816 miners in Broken Hill mines.

We’re currently in Adelaide, staying just north of the city close to our friends Jill and Steve. David and Steve are having fun in Steve’s shed working on a couple of projects David has come up with for the van. I’m using the time here to get doctor and dentist visits out of the way. The rest of our time is spent eating, drinking and catching up. Having lots of fun.

Berri

After Mildura we spent a couple of weeks in Berri just relaxing, fishing, walking and stuff. Berri is in the riverland area of South Australia and there are numerous wineries and orange groves. There is a great farmer’s market in Berri where local producers bring cured meats, fantastic fruit and veg and cakes and biscuits. It was a really enjoyable couple of weeks.

While in Berri, we visited the Cobdogla Irrigation and Steam Museum, a very interesting place. They say they have the only working Humphreys Pump in the world and it is only started 4 times a year, today was one of the 4. It is a pump that was used to draw water from the Murray for irrigation of surrounding properties. For the technically minded this is a very quick explanation as I understood it, it is an internal combustion engine of sorts that uses water as the piston, the incoming water is pumped into the cylinder, as the water level rises and falls the inlet and exhaust valves control the air into the combustion chamber, at the correct time residual fuel from a wood fired engine (see photo of stacks and startup pump) is mixed above the water (combustion chamber) and is fired electrically, forcing the water out into large tanks and then into the irrigation channels. Apparently using residual fuel from the wood fired engine makes for a very slow burn which moves the water rather than blowing the head of the Humphrey Pump. If I heard the guys correctly it can pump up to 40,000 litres per minute. This is a great place to visit with a man’s shed with all sorts of stationary engines, a steam train, steam tractor and many other exhibits. Whilst at first it seems to be a blokes place, Maggie said that she had a great time as well so it must have been good.

Mildura

Well, we’ve been in Mildura for nearly 2 weeks now. We’ve been doing some tourist stuff, but not a lot. It’s just been nice hanging out in the park, reading, watching tv etc. Nothing very exciting I guess, but just, nice.

We went to Mungo National Park yesterday – it’s nice, but I think our expectations were too high, so we were a little disappointed. We had seen photographs of the park in a magazine which were just stunning, but I think the time the photos were taken as well as the lens used made the photo’s much more dramatic than it really is. The main feature in the park is The Walls of China which is a lunette formed by the wind into an almost lunar type landscape on the western side and sand dunes on the eastern side, and is worth seeing. The rest of the park is mainly made up of saltbush, blue bush, rosewood trees and belah’s (causarina trees). The area used to be a series of lakes which dried up approximately 18,000 years ago, then Europeans moved in with their sheep and cattle for a while before it was declared a national park in 1979. To get to the park you have to drive over 100km on dirt roads. The road is maintained very well so the drive wasn’t too rough although I’m glad we didn’t take the van in, I think we would have had a few broken dishes!

Cowra

After our week with Marg and Terry we started heading towards Lake Mungo National Park which we wanted to see, deciding to stop at Cowra on the way there. We drove to Cowra via Katoomba in the Blue Mountains (beautiful views) and Bathurst. David has been to Bathurst a few times for the car racing but I’ve never been there so David took me (and the van) around the track. While I’d heard that it was really steep in parts I didn’t realise how steep some of the track was until we went round it. I also found it interesting that for people who live in the area the race track is the main road to their property. I’ve got a photo of David tearing round the track with the van at an incredible speed of 40 km/h! We spent 3 nights in Cowra visiting the Japanese Garden and the POW Camp. I really like Cowra – it’s a really pleasant town and the people are really friendly. For those interested in the craft side of things, there are 2 patchwork shops and a patchwork ‘lesson centre’ here – very impressive for a small town. I spent probably an hour in each today and the owners in each of them are lovely ladies. I had a great morning and now have some more fabric to find projects for! We went looking for a good fishing spot (we’re pretty determined!) and ended up at the Wyangala Dam – unfortunately, as you can see by the photo there’s not much chance of finding fish here! The dam capacity is down to something like 5% at the moment. They need rain up here desperately.

Port Stephens

We had arranged to meet up with David’s sister Margaret and her husband Terry for a week and we all decided that Nelson Bay at Port Stephens would be a good place for that to happen. We couldn’t get into the park we originally wanted to and had to find another one to go to and we are really pleased that it happened that way – the park we stayed in was great, right on the beach and within walking distance to shops, cafes etc. We had a lovely week with them, walking on the beach every morning then balancing things out by having a nice morning tea at one of the café’s, fishing (again, the fished just about jumped out of the water laughing at us!) winery tours in the upper Hunter Valley and generally having a great time. One of the highlights was a dolphin watch boat tour which was fantastic – the dolphins come into the bay and the boat is surrounded by dozens of these beautiful creatures. The hard part was taking their photo – they move very quickly. There were quite a few with a young one and they seem to dive in tandem. The water in the bay is crystal clear so you could see them under the water too. There were also a couple of huge manta rays in the area that day. It was a really good tour and the Daniel the skipper was really good to talk to and passed on lots of information about the area and the dolphins.

Casino again

After we left Hervey Bay we headed back down to Casino where we caught up with some friends we met in Tamworth. We had a lovely week with them before they headed off north. We will be catching up with them later in the year in WA. The second week at Casino was really quiet. Just caught up with routine domestic chores etc. I also got an opportunity to join in the craft groups at the village which was really nice – they are a lovely bunch of ladies and I always enjoy meeting up with people with similar interests as me.

Maryborough

Now this is a tree! This tree is in Queens Park (Botanic gardens) in Maryborough and is absolutely stunning – in fact the whole of the parks are stunning. While we were in the park (Valentines Day) there was a memorial service being held at the War Memorial and while there weren’t a lot of people there, a number of them were quite young and obviously were there in respect to their parents/grandparents. It was really moving to watch.

All up we spent 5 nights in Hervey Bay. It’s a beautiful area – I really love Queensland country towns – they’re different from towns in Victoria and NSW, and while we also really like the places we’ve seen in those states, there’s something about Queensland that’s unique! Not sure what it is yet, but will let you know once I work it out. While Hervey Bay is a large town, with all the shops, café’s and restaurants you find in our cities, it still has the atmosphere of a small town – we’ve found people to be really friendly and welcoming. So far we’ve visited Childers and Maryborough – both gorgeous towns, very historic and with beautiful buildings and parks. Another moving experience is in Childers at the memorial to the 15 backpackers who died when the Palace Hotel in Childers was (deliberately) burnt down. We’ve also been to a few of the beachside towns that are still unspoilt (like Burrum Heads) and next time we’re up here we plan on spending a lot of time in the area. David and I also bought ourselves some fishing rods – we like the idea of catching our dinner. Unfortunately the fish just laughed at us and ate our bait! The guy who sold us our fishing rods told us it was really easy, anyone can do it. I thought at the time, if it’s so easy how come there are so many books and dvd’s on how to do it!! I probably should have listened to that little voice. It’s fun though and we’re planning on practising a lot more as we travel around.

There are a few updates loaded today – I’ve had the words done for a while but have either been too busy, too tired, or not had good enough internet access to update the web site.  Hope it’s not too much reading for you all!

We’re currently in Hervey Bay, 30 something kms north of Maryborough in Queensland.  We found a lovely park and we’ll probably stay for a few days.  Not sure where we are heading next.  The first thing we did after setting up the van was get in the pool!  It’s really warm and humid here and it’s going to stay like that for a while I think.  While we’re here we plan on visiting Maryborough and Bundaburg.  So I’ll update in a couple of days and let you know what we’ve been up to.  We’ve got pretty good internet access here too which is a bonus!