Day of depression

I am beginning to think we are going to be in Broken Hill the rest of our lives. I feel so hard done by I refuse to go out this morning so Geoff visits the Rail Museum by himself which he thoroughly enjoyed. We are very worried we are going to be here another week as when we got back into Range last Friday Subaru had left a message that it would be a week to 10 days until they could get the replacement car over to us from Adelaide. We are angry that we have already lost a quarter of our holiday.  We went back to Demo club for a $13 Sunday roast like last week and while there we saw Pippa Yeats' in laws. I don't think they really remembered us and probably thought we were going to attack them when we chased them to say hullo but they invited us to the Aboriginal Church they pastor in the evening which we thoroughly enjoyed. The people were lovely, welcoming and friendly. By the end of the day some of our anger was subsiding. 

Menindee Lakes

Geoff had always wanted to see Menindee Lakes so we decided to take the hire car there and stay the night as it was over 100km away. We should have pulled the pin on the idea when we heard the weather forecast of 37.  We arrived mid morning and did a bit of a walking tour around the now tiny town. We didn't feel very comfortable with being there when a carload of people went past and yelled out 'f*** off'  We ploughed on and went to look for these beautiful Lakes only to find most of the water had been released down to people downstream to irrigate farms in NSW and South Australia.  We did however visit Kinchega National Park which includes the old Kinchega Station including a restored wool shed. Built in 1875 of corrugated iron and river red gum, the historic Kinchega Woolshed is a vast and very well preserved classic piece of Australian pastoral heritage. Inside the woolshed, there were wool presses and tables, a machinery room and an original steam engine as well as sweating pens and the board where the sheep were held for shearing. In 97 years of operation, six million sheep were sheared here, an amazing thing to imagine as you wander through this quietly majestic building.  

 

 

 

Burke and Wills had their base camp at Menindee on the river and this is where they set out fromon their fateful journey.   

Burke and Wills base camp

 

Geoff found an old surveyors tree    

Darling River

We had taken Ashley's pack raft to float down the Darling river but it was just too hot. We ended up deciding to not stay overnight but to return to the air conditioned motel room in Broken Hill. 

Mutawintji National Park

We decided to make the most of our enforced stay in Broken Hill and booked into a day tour   Mutawintji  (pronounced moot-a-wint-ji) National Park, the sacred heart of the Byngnano Ranges, was once a busy meeting place for Australia’s ancient indigenous inhabitants. Their dreamtime stories, history and teachings adorn rocks and caverns, as stencils and engravings, providing a unique insight into the life & culture of the Australian aboriginal people. Mutawintji holds evidence of Aboriginal occupation dating back over 8,000 years.   Geoff and I were the only ones on the tour and it was an enjoyable day. 

 

 

 

Such arid and iconce Australian landscapes. Lots of Aboriginal history and art and fossils and ancient backgrounds. We saw lots of kangaroos and emus. The emus were so huge and run very fast. They are almost comical. 

RFDS and other sights of Broken Hill

We had a bet as to who would be the first to drop the fact that our daughter was a Flight Nurse with Air Ambulance before we arrived at the RFDS base. Thinking I was still in the Ladies just after arriving, I came upon Geoff in full flight about Jen with the lady in the shop. Easiest bet I ever won! Amazing history of the RFDS was on display with interactive displays and movies which really captured the difference this service has made to the bush. 

First plane used by RFDS

 

We also visited the Miners Memorial up the top of the line of Lode. So many men have died mining the ore here and in many horrible ways. I couldn't understand what the line of load was for a long time after arriving in Broken Hill but now I think I do.   

 

Couldn't resist climbing up here seeing it said not to!    

Silverton

    Now we have our hire car we can get out and about a bit so today we decided to go to Silverton as Geoff has always wanted to go there.    The town sprang up in the 1880's after the discovery of rich silver deposits, although it was soon eclipsed by an even richer silver-lead-zinc ore body at nearby Broken Hill. The population was around 3000 in its heyday but when Broken Hill deposits were discovered a decade later most of the inhabitants packed up their houses ( literally) and moved to Broken Hill. Today it is a ghost town with a population of around 40. It is a dry and dusty and hot place and you can see why they picked it to film Mad Max 2.

 

 

 

By lunchtime it was unbearably hot so we returned to Broken Hill 

   

Waiting, waiting, waiting......

It seems like we have blundered into a remake of the movie ' Ground hog day' where the hero wakes up in the same place and time and seems cursed to repeat the same day over and over. It is now over a week and we are still in Broken Hill and now have pretty much run out of things to do. Last Sunday we did a self guided walking tour trying to doge between patches of shade, we found some relief in the regional art gallery. Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery was established in 1904 and is the oldest regional gallery in New South Wales. It is housed in one of Broken Hill’s original heritage buildings, the beautifully restored Sully’s Emporium. On display is a selection of works from the City of Broken Hill’s art collection and a quality program of temporary exhibitions by local, state and national artists along with touring exhibitions. The work by First Nation artists was of a very high standard.    

L

  We checked out the pub that featured in Priscilla queen of the desert, walking down the street we were accosted by an elderly gentleman who told us the best place to get a feed was the 'demo' - the Barrier socialist Democratic club one of many clubs that catered for the diverse population of miners from the nineteenth century. They had a Sunday lunch on offer that included desert for $13.50 that we could not resist.    

Palace Hotel

  On Monday we wasted most of the day waiting for Subaru to let us know what was happening at least they got us a hire car to get around town. In the evening we watched the sunset over the countryside from the Living Desert Sculptures just outside of Broken Hill.   

  

 

  The next day we went back early in the morning to the same area to do a walk through the Living Desert Flora and Fauna park. It was interesting although we didn't see a lot of either flora or fauna. It was very hot  

After lunch we went to the Pro Hart gallery. I hadn't seen much of his work before but it was really good and it seemed he had been such a wonderful human being. He had been down the mines for many years and a lot of his work reflected the good and the bad  of life down below the earth. He certainly captured the colours of sky and earth out here.    Then it was onto the Mineral and Geology museum which was excellent as it gave an visual display of how the earth was formed and in particular how Broken Hill came to be. Still don't understand where the elements that were reacted in the Big Bang came from or who made them but that wasn't included in the video! Some wonderful displays there    

Then it was again back to our motel prison. Still waiting on the mechanic to check out the car!

Day 7 Beyond a Joke Now

We packed everything up excitedly ready to leave as soon as Geoff picked the car up. But it wasn't long before Geoff was back. He was fuming. They had sent the wrong part and it would be now tomorrow that the car could be fixed. another day in Nyngan! Finally the next day we set off. Yay! On our way now  

But we only got an hour west of Nyngan when the warning lights came on again and we limped into Cobar and back on the phone to Subaru and the diagnosis was that although the hose had been changed the DPF system needed a 'regen'.  Hours later we tracked down a diesel mechanic that had the right scan tool. It took 3 hours  and three cycles to get the soot levels down. He instructed us to take it for a 30 minute drive the next morning before coming back for a soot reading. It was a bit higher but still within normal range.  I kept thinking I was hearing the telltale whooshy noise but Geoff was adamant it wasn't there   So off we set from Cobar with high hopes. 13 km down the road and lights back on! Back to Cobar and back onto our new friend Trent from Subaru. This time Subaru wanted us to be towed to Dubbo as there was a service centre there. We reluctantly agreed but were rather distressed when told that we would have to pay the $1500 for the tow. (Subaru later agreed to pay) Seeing by now it was late we could not get a tow until the next morning so once again we had to stay overnight in Cobar. We were picked up at 6am by the towtruck and off we went to Dubbo. Four hours replacing our steps- so depressing. They dropped off the van in the caravan park. It is so hot and we have no shade. Here we stayed for 2 days while they found a new DPF unit which apparently cost $6000. The hose hadn't been put on properly in Nyngan and hence the whooshy noise again. As there were no DPF units in Australia in the end our friend Trent drove to Gosford and they took one off a new car and then he drove to Blue Mountains and dropped it off at the NSW service managers place who drove it out to Dubbo where he supervised the repairs. Finally the next day he brought it back to us promising all repairs done and it was serviced and checked. No more problems he said.     

  We stayed overnight at Nyngan again, this time in a nice caravan park by the river. Early the next day we set off with great enthusiasm and optimism. Four hours of trouble free driving and then boom! All the lights are back on and the car loses power going up a hill. We are past knowing what to say at this point. We are out in the middle of nowhere, no shelter, high 30's temperature and no phone reception. It was a bit scary. However, we were blessed to quickly come upon a rest area with a shelter and presto- Telstra reception. Seeing it was the weekend there was no one at Subaru answering their phones so it was onto NRMA. Geoff had a lot of trouble convincing them to send a towtruck. They wanted to first send a patrolman out from Cobar to see what the problem was (4 hours) and then they would go back and get the tow truck if needed. Obviously this person was in Sydney somewhere and had no idea about the distances in the outback. At the thought of going back to Cobar again I was close to tears. Eventually Geoff got them to agree to send a towtruck from Broken Hill to tow us there. At least it would be in the right direction! It took four hours for the towtruck to arrive. It was very hot and dusty.     

 

Geoff is starting to think that the only way we are going to get out of NSW is if he pulls the van himself. So after four hours of waiting in the heat it was another four hours in the tow truck heading into the sun before we finally got into Broken Hill at 8pm.