AAA Tour - Day 17 - Broken Hill to Cobar

A long day in the saddle today, on our way back to Tamworth.

Lining up for fuel at Wilcannia

We reluctantly decided to bypass Warrawong, at Wilcannia, in favour of a long drive on the first of three days driving. This will also give us the advantage of staying the night in Gulargambone. The caravan park is one of several pieces of infrastructure which has been taken over by a collective formed by locals in order to keep their town alive. We are told that the welcome at the park is warm and the activities provided as a bonus to accommodation fees, need to be experienced. In 1978, Sue did her first prac teaching assignment at Gulargambone Central but remembers more about the pool table at the pub. I remember receiving a call from her two college mates suggesting I should come out for the weekend as she was chatting up locals at the pool table. There's more to this story but another time.

The 460kms to Cobar passed without much in the way of events worth a mention. Perhaps the most notable was the line up for fuel at Wilcannia. There is one petrol station and a fuel depot. The depot has a range of fuels, where as the petrol station has unleaded 91 & 98 and diesel ... when the pumps for 98 and diesel aren't broken or out of gas. We joined a queue of five and more piled up behind us. With the distances to travel out here, hoping you'll make it isn't an option.

During the afternoon, Sue had her first drive of the tour and her first with this van. She doesn't like driving at the best of times, so it sort of worked out that I am usually the one behind the wheel but its not realistic for her not to practice the skills needed when towing. The time may come when I am injured or sick and that's not the time to be learning how. She had a reasonably uneventful run apart from emus who wandered a little close to the edge of the road and a nerve-wracking few minutes with a B-double hard on her tail. She was fine and will hopefully have a few more stints at the wheel in the next few days.

Its no reflection on her that I hate sitting in the passenger seat. Because I have done so much driving - nearing 2 million kms - I find it hard to be comfortable when someone else is in control.

Drive through site tonight with no frills and van staying hitched for a quick getaway in the morning.

AA Tour - Day 16 - Silverton

Old Silverton Gaol Museum

Our last day in the area was spent at Silverton, to the north west of Broken Hill.

Silverton once had 3000 residents, compared to today's tally of 52. It became a town in 1876 after silver deposits were found there a year earlier. It is therefore an older town than Broken Hill.

Today a few residents seem to enjoy living the twenty odd kilometres from Broken Hill but it is the past, people come to see. There is a small caravan park, Penrose Park, which has had several uses over the years. It has been a racecourse, a picnic ground and a sportsground. The area was named after John Penrose, a popular early resident who was a brewer.

We started our day at Beyond 39 Dips, a reference we think to the many dips in the road from Broken Hill. Its a gallery, a cafe and a tourist information office (they have the maps of the town), so after a browse, we sat on the front verandah in the sunshine and drank our hot chocolates.

The old gaol was our next stop. Refurbished by the Broken Hill Historical Society, this place has too much information and is in need of curation. That said, it was fabulously interesting. Lots of old photos, details and artifacts but in the end, we were swamped by it all.

Silverton Hotel

For lunch, we went to the Old Silverton Hotel which has been used in 19 movies over the years, including "Razorback" and "A Town Like Alice". One wall is covered with photo snaps of famous visitors. I noticed several actors, politicians and sportsmen I knew, in various poses around the pub. INXS was notable. Everywhere you look there is something worthy of examination. Lunch was taken on the side verandah, again in the sun, where it seemed warmer than 14C. Shadows seemed colder. Out the front of the building is a replica of The Road Warrior's Interceptor from Mad Max 2 - a loose interpretation as the original model was a VW Beetle. There were Beetles dotted everywhere around Silverton.

After lunch, we went to Silverton's most spoken of attraction, Adrian Bennett's shrine to the movie Mad Max 2. We had a chat with Adrian, a native of Bradford in England's north. He saw the movie as a nineteen year old in Bradford and packed up his world effects and came to Silverton to create his museum. The place is amazing. He has so many genuine artifacts from the movie, a massive amount of photos from the production phase of the movie, video clips and lots of props from the movie. Recently, he was interviewed for the new David Stratton program on ABC TV. You have to admire his passion and commitment. This was an attraction which lived up to expectations.

We visited some art galleries and then the old school, which closed in 1970 but has been lovingly refurbished and stocked with loads of school related things by the Broken Hill Historical Society and a small handful of older locals. Mary Jane Campbell was assistant teacher here in the early days of the 1880's. She loved to write poetry and went on to become Dame Mary Gilmour. The desks are covered with old text books and school magazines. There was a geometry set similar to those I used fifty years ago. The volunteer gave us lots of information about the school and local families.

Lunch at the Silverton Hotel

We left Silverton for an hour, travelling further north west to a hill above the Mundi Mundi Plains. You are supposed to be impressed with the flatness. Well it was certainly flat but I didn't quite see the curvature of the earth. I'm certain my camera will show it but that's because I took shots with a wide angled lens. Five kms further away from civilisation we reached the Umberumberka Reservoir, which still acts as a water supply for Broken Hill in times of drought. Several creeks flow into the reservoir, including Umberumberka Creek, which flows through Silverton. Flows is a tricky term, as the creek only flows after rain. In between, it is just a sandy bed with redgums. There are picnic tables and toilets available at the reservoir but scant evidence that it is used other than by tourists.

Back in Silverton, we found our way via a sandy dirt road to meet Helen Murray at her Silverton Photography Gallery. She is such a down to earth person and we had a good chat about several things, including photography. I loved here approach to the work and her desire to get the best shot she could "in the camera", instead of manipulating it post photo. She also had a gorgeous dog who greeted us as we arrived and was happy to receive my attentions.

On the way back into town, we stopped by an open carriage sitting on tracks that no longer exist. It marks the only attack on Australian soil during the First World War. On New Years Day, 1915, two Turkish camel drivers opened fire on carriages of residents from Broken Hill - 1200 of them - who were travelling in converted mining carriages to a picnic day held by the Manchester Unity Order of Oddfellows at Penrose Park at Silverton. They escaped over the low hills to the camel drivers camp where they were tracked down and shot by police and soldiers. Two people from the carriages died immediately and 21 were wounded. The attackers, Badsha Mahommed, an ice ream vendor and Mullah Abdullah, a butcher, hilled two more on the way to the camel camp, before they died in the gunfight there.

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That was about that. Silverton is a really interesting place and well worth spending the day exploring it.

Shopping, fuel and back to our maison sur roues.

A town walking tour of Broken Hill tomorrow morning and then we start the journey home.

AAA Tour - Day 15 - Silver City Tours

Mine view from Miner's Memorial

Our morning was spent with Peter, our driver and tour guide from Silver City Tours, as he toured us around Broken Hill in a small bus with very comfortable leather seats.

After being gathered from our different accommodation spots and calling in at the Tourist Information Centre, our starting point of the tour was the Miner's Memorial, way up high above the town on top of the Line of Load. The wind, although not strong, assaulted us as soon as we left the lee of the bus. We had visited the memorial on our first morning in Broken Hill but the additional information Peter provided certainly gave substance and body to the names on the boards in front of us. However, as he rolled out facts and anecdotes, it just got colder and we were pleased to return to the bus.

Among the many things we found out in the next four hours, were:

Lone pine from
Lone Pine

• Broken Hill has no underground storm water drainage. Instead, it has a complex system of humps and hollows along its road system which channels the water eastwards to large storm water collections and from there to a created wetland and in overflow, to a small reservoir outside of town;
• the former Silver King Hotel, was the first pub in Broken Hill. At its height, there were 72;
• the original town hall lives on as a facade in the main street;
• the big bin which brings mined rocks to the surface is called a skip and it carries 13 tonne of rock;
• the green tinge on slag heaps is a special die they add to the water they spray over the heaps to settle the dust. The die allows them to know where they have sprayed and its green because it looks environmentally friendly;
• the gaol is minimum security. In former days, a team from the gaol played in the darts competition at a nearby pub. The warden would take the men to the pub, watch them play and then return them after a few sneaky beers;

We visited the Perilya Mine operation, through very tight security and Peter took us through information about the Line of Load, the discovery of silver, lead and zinc and mining techniques. Outside, an interesting sidelight was a pine tree that had been grown from a seed of the lone pine tree at Lone Pine, Gallipoli ... or so the story goes. 

In Wolfram St, we stopped outside the original home of June Gough, who left Broken Hill to pursue a career in singing: she even adopted a stage name that paid homage to her background. June Bronhill was one of the world's best opera singers.

We saw the home of a recently retired doctor who was known as Fortnight Phil or Doc Holiday because he would often put miner's off work for longer periods of time than their physical injuries perhaps warranted. It would seem he had an earlier grasp on the need to protect the mental health of the men who saw him.

We passed the Central Power Station which provided power to the mines and is now being developed as a facility for film making and the Galena St Power Station which is now a hardware store.

Celotto's version of "Birth of Venus"

One of my favourite destinations was the Belair Drive In, near the main golf course off the Tibooburra Rd. Overrun by VHS and eventually DVDs, all that remains are the small poles which once held the speakers and a brick kiosk. The saltbush is gradually reclaiming the rest.

This was a really good local tour.

In the afternoon, we visited the small gallery of Julie Hart, the daughter of Pro Hart. Her work was very nice but strongly derivative of her father. We also called in at the Palace Hotel.

The Palace started life in 1889 as a coffee palace, built by the Tempereance Movement in opposition to the great number of local hotels. It went broke within three years and reopened as ... a hotel! It is famous for its murals. Mario Celotto, owner for many years from the early 1970's, painted his own version of Botticelli's "Birth of Venus" and put up a challenge to anyone to match his work, with a reward of $1000 if they could. An Aboriginal artist, Gordon Waye, took up the challenge and painted one wall of the front bar with an outback scene and over the next eight years, painted walls throughout the hotel.

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The Palace is also famous for being the venue of the bar scenes of "Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert".

Silverton tomorrow.

AAA Tour - Day 14 - Flying Doctors & Minerals

For nearly 90 years, the inspired desire of John Flynn to provide a "mantle of safety" to Australians in remote areas, has been flying doctors, dentists and nursing specialists to them to protect and save. These days, that service has extended beyond the emergency call for help and includes the provision of an expansive system of clinics run in community centres and the use of motor vehicles.

This all takes money, some of which is provided by State and Federal governments - wages, insurance and running costs. However, replacement equipment has to be met by fund raising and this includes new aircraft. The most common aircraft in the fleet, the Beechcraft King Air, costs $10 million to be fully kitted out and under the usual servicing and replacement schedule for these aircraft, that means three need to be replaced each year.

Somehow they do it or perhaps, somehow we do it, for it is average Australians who do the heavy lifting in fund raising for the RFDS.

This all became apparent during our tour of the RFDS base at the Broken Hill airport. Our guide, Larry, took us through the operational procedures of the service and explained the changes from radio to telephone communications thanks to satellite.

Very, very impressive people.

We returned to the cafe we tried yesterday, The Silly Goat, giving it a chance to redeem its noisy impact on us yesterday. It was a lot quieter today. The coffee was just as good and we also had a fabulous gluten-free, dairy-free lunch.

After lunch we tried to visit West Darling Arts but it was closed. We did visit the Silver City Art Centre and Mint and wished it had been closed. It's the home of the "The Big Picture", a big concave scene of the outback which is 100m long and 12m high, painted by Peter Anderson over the course of two years and using nine tonnes of paint. I guess when you use that much, you know longer measure it in litres. His brother has built the scene in front of it to make it more realistic: hence the plastic kangaroos. The rest of the "gallery" is an exercise in tacky. Elsewhere in Broken Hill, visitors will know what it is that art does in response to its landscape and the integrity of art's interpretation of life.

From this low point, we went to the Albert Kersten Mining and Minerals Museum, also known as the Geocentre. Formerly a Bond store where items were stored awaiting tax being paid on them, it was purchased by the local Council specifically for the museum. It has two very important pieces on display: a 42kg silver nugget and a small tree modeled in silver and originally owned by the man who discovered silver in Broken Hill, Charles Rasp. The geological development of the Line of Load - the large deposit that lies under Broken Hill - is explained well in a short video and there are lots of minerals and crystals on display. In a separate gallery, an exhibition of the artwork of local school children on the theme of recycling and reusing materials was refreshing.

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I particularly liked a large video display highlighting individual streets in Broken Hill - mostly named after ores and minerals - and what each of them are.

We finished out the day with communal nibblies and drinks back at the caravan park - an event organised by the park hosts each afternoon. Its a good chance to catch up on things to do and places to stay. I'm perfecting small talk. Its hard.

AAA Tour - Day 13 - Art Galleries and Sculptures

Art deco in the main street

Our first full day in Broken Hill followed an indifferent night. It was cold and the toilet block was some distance away and its a very busy park, with vans squeezed onto small sites, side by side. In other words, no pissing room, so each call of the bladder has to be attended to in the officially designated facility.

I don't sleep well under those conditions because you are fully awake by the time you return. If the walk hasn't done it, the bright fluorescent lights in the amenities have and then there's the mind number cold.

All that aside ...

We started the morning with a visit to the trendiest coffee shop in town. Its so trendy, you have to show your ID to prove you are under 65. The coffee was great but the noise level was cacophonic and we slurped and left.

We had a slight Google Map malfunction, walking the opposite way than directed so our walk to the Regional Art Gallery took slightly longer than the three minutes promised but it was a nice day and the buildings we saw made up for it. We reached the gallery - Sue gleefully noticing a white on blue road sign twenty meters ahead of us whilst I was content to notice the big sign above the door a metre to our left. Before entering, we had a quick chat with an old chap who was passing and he told us how he had worked for thirty years for Sully's Emporium,  where the art gallery now stood. His closing comment was "you have a good time" to which Sue replied "11:30" and walked inside.

The gallery was a delight. Downstairs was an exhibition from the Alice Springs Beanie Festival, which raises money for brain cancer. There were some weird and wonderful "beanies", not many of them recognisable as the knitted domes my mum used to make for me. They were colourful and creative and the making of them very creative. The Beanie Festival is very much an inclusive event and a number of aboriginal women appeared in interviews that were playing on a TV in the corner of the exhibition. There was even a selection which punters could try on and view themselves in a mirror. A really fun exhibition.

Upstairs was a potpourri of quality paintings and some sculptures. In the big gallery, unknowns hung beside some Australia's best and of course, being Broken Hill, there were works by Pro Hart. Other well known artists include Rupert Bunny, Lloyd Rees, John Coburn, Sidney Nolan, Arthur Streeton and the weird surrealism of James Gleeson. An impressive and diverse range. In other galleries were a beautiful exhibition of aboriginal woven objects and past winners of the Pro Hart Outback Art Prize.

Throw in a lovely lass on the counter who researched a couple of things for Sue without being asked and then had a discussion about obtuse films following me noticing that the gallery had recently screened the original Dracula film, Nosferatu ... and you have a good experience.

After lunch, we continued the art theme with visits to the studios of Pro Hart and Jack Absolom.

The Pro Hart studio was interesting, mostly because neither of us were aware of the range of his art or his story. Kevin Hart was known as an inventor in his younger years and got the nickname, "Professor", hence, Pro. From a sheep farm near Menindee, he ended up in the mines at Broken Hill, often sketching fellow workers and then developed a variety of art styles, including a paint gun which fired paint at the canvas and many paintings with workers in masks. By far his most common form was stick figures drawn in community against the strident colours of the outback.

At Jack Absolom's gallery, the vast beautiful landscapes that he traversed in his outback travels are painted lovingly and with hued haze that is often present in the vast distances the flatness of the outback allows us. A treat was the appearance of the 90 year old Absolom in the gallery as we were leaving.

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As the afternoon was winding down to its finale, we headed out to the Sculptures of the Living Desert. Proposed by Lawrence Beck in 1992 at an exhibition opening, his vision for the final nature of the Sculpture Symposium, high on the highest hill of an area in the Barrier Ranges owned by the local Council, was not decided until he consulted with an eagle. Yes, well. That aside, the end result of the sculpting of 53 tonnes of Wilcannia sandstone by artists from all over the world, is quite spectacular and unique. We walked among them and stayed until sunset approached but left before the final denouement.

AAA Tour - Day 12 - Wilcannia to Broken Hill

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It was really hard to leave Warrawong on the Darling. Such a beautiful spot. Imagine having your caravan backed up to the edge of a billabong, with hundreds of birds feeding. Got the picture yet?

We drove the 200kms to Broken Hill without event.

After booking in, we visited the information centre for details of some things to see and then drove up onto the top of the original mine to the Line of Load Miner's Memorial. Towering over the city, it is situated over the line of ore body which bisects the city and remembers the more than 800 miner's killed in the history of mining in Broken Hill.

Nearby is the former Broken Earth Cafe; Restaurant which has been closed. Its located in one of the outstanding places over any city in Australia. Its to be hoped that it reopens in some form rather than sit like a the elephant in Broken Hill's room.

Mambray Creek - Broken Hill

5/10/08 Port Lincoln - Whyalla - Port Augusta - Mambray Creek  394(15182) kms

We travelled to Mount Remarkable: the Mambray Creek section which is about 50 km from Port Augusta and about a 400 km hop from Port Lincoln at the bottom of the Spencer Gulf. We had intended climbing Mt Cavern the following day for its spectacular views over the gulf and then driving across to Canberra to see my brother and his family. Unfortunately, Sue's back has had enough so we have had to turn instead for home. Actually, she is homesick and the last straw was having her pyjamas stolen in Port Lincoln. Suddenly, but not surprisingly, she just wants to be home in her own bed.

TODAY'S PHOTOS

6/10/08 Mambray Creek - Peterborough - Broken Hill    424(15606) kms

An interesting place and lovely old buildings. Sue dropped in to the Pro Hart Gallery for 15 minutes before it closed for the day and we drove out to look at the Living Sculptures, a series of sculptures on a hill looking back toward the city. Back to a supermarket for some groceries for tea. No time to do or see anything else.

Driving to Cobar tomorrow and then home on Wednesday. All good things they say ...