(Almost) Stuck in Broken Hill.

When we go on holiday we always seem to end up staying somewhere longer than intended for reasons beyond our control, usually car related, and this time was no exception.

We went to Broken Hill with the intent of staying about four or five days and ended up staying about a week and a half. One reason was that we kept finding things to do, another was that we were well into holiday mode, and, frankly, couldn’t be bothered moving on! The reason for an extra few days in the middle of our stay was attributed to the car.

Our Toyota 4wd is a dual fuel vehicle, meaning it runs on both unleaded fuel and gas. This is very convenient when we do long drives, but in more remote areas gas can be quite hard to get. Having two tanks also extends the distance between fuel stops which, again, is very helpful when the next servo can be quite a distance away.

The only problem we have found is that at random times, without notice, our car will refuse to run on petrol while running beautifully on gas. We have found that a small relay under the bonnet which controls the switching between the two will die and need to be replaced. It happens so often when we are away that we always take a spare relay, or two, so that over the time away we can replace it and then get another in the next big town without having to risk being stuck without one.

In Broken Hill, not unexpectedly, it blew and was immediately replaced by the Man. No problem, it happens every few months, no biggie. Then, a day later, it blew another one, our only spare. Bugger. Since Broken Hill is a large town we have no trouble refuelling with gas so continuing to drive was no problem. We had a look around town, and went to as many places we could think of that might sell relays, or be able to circumvent the gas system altogether, and not one of them knew anything about gas cars. Bugger 😦

We were starting to get worried. We were now capable of driving around Broken Hill every day for the rest of our lives, but until we worked out how to switch the car back to petrol we couldn’t go anywhere else, as the next servos who reliably supply gas are beyond the limits of our gas tank!

We wandered through the town and looked in the real estate office windows to find that if we sold our little house in the Yarra Valley we could buy quite a nice, and somewhat bigger, house in Broken Hill and have enough money left over to buy clothing and furniture. Although we were enjoying our time in Broken Hill we prefer our green little valley, so we continued to look for someone to fix the car.

The culprit.

Two days later we remembered that each year we pay for a Complete Care membership with the RACV but never use it… hmmmm…. you can tell our brains are on holiday too, can’t you?

The point of paying for that is to call them when the car goes wrong and they will fix it.

We called them, the guy took one look at it and said “I dunno”.

Great.

Fortunately, he was able to give us the name of the one guy in town who actually knew something about gas cars, phew!

The Man drove down there immediately in the hopes that he would, if not fix it, get us back on to petrol. An hour later the Man returned, triumphant, Yippee!! This bloke not only got the petrol working, he actually tracked back to the root of the problem (other gas guys over the years had not been able to do this) and changed another part further up the wiring to (hopefully) ensure it never happens again.

We are now travelling with our fingers crossed, hoping that he really did fix it and we won’t have to ever deal with that particular problem again. I suppose it doesn’t really matter though. The car will find something else to throw at us next time we go away I’m sure!

A big seat, an old chimney, and a sad memory.

This morning we thought we would go and have a look at the tourist centre thing overlooking the town. The building is perched precariously high on the top of the line of lode, and from the streets below it just looks like a building that slid off the back of a truck and landed hanging half off the edge of a big pile of gravel. As you travel around town it pops out from between buildings looking like it will only take the slightest tremor to slide it onto the train line below.

Just waiting for the OH&S guy to take the homemade step away….

Once we got up there we were confronted with a completely unexpected thing. A giant, red, park bench. A nearby plaque explained that it was art so the boys sat down, trying to appreciate it, but we only ended up laughing at its sheer silliness.

Obviously when the artist envisaged this piece he never though of one thing. People actually using it. It’s a chair and all, surely he would have factored in that possibility.

No human could have possibly sat up there without first climbing up on the wobbly bricks some obliging, and more practical, person had piled up on one side.

After a few photos of the kids pulling the kinds of faces a giant red chair deserved we wandered inside. It seemed to consist only of a cafe and a small gift shop, the outside area leading to a miners memorial and other touristy things was shut due to the weather, the winds were pretty strong and we were up pretty high… but, still, annoying… The whole thing looked better from down below when there was the chance it might fall down..

The plaque reads; This fireplace built by Tom Phin and A.W.B Orman May 1885 is part of the first office of the B.H.P.

Afterwards we thought we would look for something we had seen in one of the tourist brochures. There was still a remnant of the original BHP (Broken Hill Proprietory Company) building left in the town in the form of a stone chimney.It wasn’t very well signposted and in the tradition of all crappy tourist maps we pretty much had to guess where it might be. We found it easily but I really don’t think to many people bother to turn up the very short street at the side of the line of lode to see it.

It was just a chimney the same as all the other 1800’s stone chimneys we see on our travels but this time is wasn’t an anonymous pile out in the bush, or a picturesque ruin in someones garden. This was where the biggest mining company in the world began. Yep, BHP Billiton. Richest hole diggers in the world.

I think that anywhere else in the world the chimney would be surrounded by a museum extolling the virtues of the company, here in Broken Hill it is just an old chimney with the top broken and a corrugated iron roof keeping the worst of the weather off.

Once we left the chimney site we went looking for another old mine site, Browne’s shaft. Unlike most of the mine stuff in town that has been placed in a viewing area, this is a place that almost looks like the miners just walked off the job last year.

Browne’s Shaft.

Right next door is the managers house, now a private residence. You look down the shaft and there is a big dark hole. The small cages the miners rode down to the levels are right there, above your head.

It gives the impression that it wouldn’t take much effort to get it all up and running again, and was by far the most interesting mine thing we had seen so far.

 We spent ages wandering around looking at it from all angles and then wandered off into the scrub around it.

The man found a pile of old corings just lying in the spinifex and the kids ran around happily finding bits of old metal, pins and other interesting scrap just scattered around.

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The saddest thing we saw today was these trucks on the side of the road as we were going up to the top of the line of lode. The plaque on the left reads;

To the memory of mullockers

Thomas Jordan aged 19

Leopold Campbell aged 21

Whose bodies remain beneath this spot in the A5 stope, 500 ft level, Central mine

as a result of a fall of rock at 3am 8th October 1902.

Dedicated 8th October 2002.

Mineral museum, Broken Hill.

Number 2 son is a strange one. A boy of his age should be mainly interested in things like ninjas, weapons and video games, and he is, massively so.

shiny rock.

Something else he is even more interested in is a little unusual. He loves rocks. Shiny rocks, boring rocks, weird rocks, he loves them all.

Can you imagine how happy this little person was yesterday when we took him to a mineral museum?

He happily sat through the video display of the creation of the mineral deposits at Broken Hill, then raced ahead to see what treasures awaited.

He was not disappointed. I was immediately requested to take a photo of him standing next to a 42kg nugget of native silver, then spent the next half an hour or so taking photos of pretty much every display in the room, just so he didn’t miss a thing. “Mum, look at this.” “Mum, over here!” I expect that the other patrons were quick to move on just because they were shamed by their lack of excitement. 😉

weird rock.

There was even a table with a collection of minerals complete with a magnifier that beamed the enlarged image onto a big tv screen above you.

Oh, happy days! The amethyst residing in his pocket was whipped out and minutely examined before the rocks on the table were inspected with equal interest.

Number 1 son is not as interested in rocky things, but still goes along with it, after all, it is hard to resist such enthusiasm.

It was a small display, too small, obviously. As he neared the exit a little voice rang out through the room, “Awww, is that all?”

Strange child…. 😀

spiky rock.

The Living Desert, Broken Hill.

Last night we drove to The Living Desert, a park about 12km out of Broken Hill. It has a nature trail and a walk to the top of a hill where you can see a series of sandstone sculptures carved by artists from around the world in 1993, each with their own story. We planned to go at the end of the day to see the sun set hoping there would be a nice view from it.

We arrived there about 5 (the gates shut at 7) and decided not to drive directly to the top, but to drive around and park at the bottom of the hill, and walk up to the sculptures. That was a big mistake.

The walk winds around the stony hill and through a multitude of indigenous plants giving great views at every turn.

By the time we reached the sculpture garden at the top we had seen beautiful rocky outcrops, amazing views and quietly watched emus walk through the bushes while a group of teenagers stomped past, completely oblivious to them on their quest to get to the art.

No sculpture could outdo the natural beauty we saw on the way up there so when we arrived to find a crowd oohing and aaahing over what I thought were mostly average pieces we were distinctly underwhelmed. Some were good, but they were the ones with the largest amount of admirers and the hardest to see.

My apologies to those artists who had obviously put a lot of effort into their sculptures, including one who injured his hand badly while there, and whose piece had to be finished by a group effort, but I know what I like…

We did a turn around the sculptures, dodging the other visitors all the while. After re-grouping we decided that we would be more entertained by walking to one of the spots we had seen earlier, making ourselves comfortable, and watching the sunset in peace.

We wandered down the hill and found a nice spot to watch the shadows lengthening in the distance. Of course, once the sun had sunk to acceptably low level we realized we had no idea what time it was and from our vantage point we could see that our car was the only one left in the carpark. Eeek! We zoomed back to the car and made it out before the gate shut… phew! It would have been a cold night out there, that’s for sure!

Broken Hill, just wandering around.

We went for a wander through the main town of Broken Hill today just to have a stickynose around. It is one of those typical old towns with hugely wide streets that wouldn’t be too hard to imagine lined with horses and carts, and with an old pub on nearly every corner I could just about see the streets thronged with thirsty miners.

Street sculpture, Broken Hill.

It is a place that loves its art too, there was a small art exhibition in the town hall we stopped in to see, and there are sculptures in the main street. Just out of town is ‘The Living Desert’, an outdoor sculpture exhibit that we are planning to see tomorrow.

The Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery is the oldest regional art gallery in NSW and was established in 1904. I’m not sure how many other galleries it has to compete with for that particular title though….

The eccentric artist Pro Hart was born here, and the Pro Hart gallery is still here.

You Aussies will remember Pro from those long ago Stainmaster carpet ads, “Ooooh Mr Hart! What a mess!”. Fortunately for the town hall cleaners, the art we saw in there today was of a much more traditional kind!

Emus and goats do not run fast enough. Red Cliffs to Broken Hill.

Today we left Red Cliffs, getting quite an early start as we packed up in record time. Very unlike us!

We only went a short way before we had a stopover though, the Perry Sandhills are just the other side of Wentworth and we wanted to have a look at them again. Last time we went you could drive right onto the bottom of the dunes and it was great for a photo opportunity. Now care for the environment has taken precedence over convenience and you have to park at the edge and walk, how annoying! 😉

Perry Sandhills 2012.

The Perry Sandhills are a strange thing. They are like a tiny sandy desert that has become horribly lost. Face one way, dunes. Face the other and it is dead flat with trees and scrubby farmland.

We must have been the first ones to bother getting out of the car today as we had pristine dunes to run up and down. The kids were happy sliding down and making sand avalanche off the edges of the steepest dunes. Little Jack was happy running around with them but some of the sand was almost deeper than her legs so it was a real effort for her!

We only stayed a short time before packing up and heading towards Broken Hill. This is not one of the most interesting trips ever. We have this driven this road before, but this time it was far greener than we remembered it.

On the way to Broken Hill.

Obviously the wildlife was benefitting from the growth too. There were lots of emus and feral goats wandering on the sides of the roads which is interesting for the kids, but, when we are belting down the road with a heavy caravan on the back and they start to walk up onto the bitumen we don’t find it anywhere near as exciting!

goats aren’t as fast as cars……

Goats are smart and don’t often wander into the path of mechanised doom, but I have seen emus veer into the road in front of our car, throwing panicked looks over their shoulder as you draw closer, clearly wondering what is going wrong.

Luckily this has always been on a dirt road when we are travelling at a considerably slower speed, I would hate to see one do this when we are bearing down on them at over 100kmh!

Emus and goats are hard to see until you are right on them, and you just have to hope that they are smart enough to stay out of the way. We only had one near miss today, a group of three goats started to cross and only two backed out at the last minute. As the Man did his best to avoid hitting the stupidest one of the group (without killing us instead) it had a moment of clarity, turned, and ran for  its life. Phew! All the other critters we encountered had sense enough to stay at a safe distance.

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We arrived at Broken Hill around 2pm, which is the perfect time to beat all of the other travellers looking for an empty spot in the caravan parks. Just as well we were early, because a short time later we were sitting on our comfy chairs having a cold drink watching all the latecomers trying to back their gigantic vans into the remaining spots.

Backing a large caravan into a small spot is fraught with danger at the best of times but trying to do it while everyone else is sitting comfortably and watching with a critical eye is not my idea of fun…. Another reason we usually stay out in the bush all alone!