And we’re back! This time in Outback New South Wales, exploring what Broken Hill has to offer. Check out Part 1 here.
Day 4: Broken Hill
Today’s agenda: cruising around in my rented ute! I watched the sunrise from Stephen’s Creek Reservoir, that holds up to 20 megaliters of water, then went back into town and treated myself to breakfast – smashed avo and poached eggs on sourdough. Perfect to fuel me up for what the next part of my day had in store for me: a hike though the outback to an old mining site (that is tourist friendly! I promise I wasn’t trespassing). Side note: as Broken Hill is a mining town, the street names are largely chemical-based, like Chloride Street, Newton Street, and Slag Street.
The outback was less barren than I expected, but I still can’t imagine living off the land. I hiked along the old tramway that serviced the mine before the government put rail service in and saw a shingle back lizard on my hike, but still no snakes. The lizard was just hanging out in the sun, minding his own business. After my hike, I went home to my Air BnB for some lunch and then poked around town to see what was going on.
I stopped at Bell’s Milk Bar, and stepped back in time, sipping my Southern Cross flavoured milkshake (blueberry, raspberry, and vanilla) while reading some mid-century Archie comics. They seem a little different than they did when I was a kid! Wild to think how much society has changed in such gradual increments over the decades. Also, milkshakes in Australia are nothing like in Canada. It’s more like extra cold, extra sweet flavoured milk. Their version of our milkshake is deemed a “thickshake”. Still hit the spot, though.
A late afternoon excursion to Living Desert State Park was up next. There were some more hiking trails (see a trend?) and some red kangaroos out doing kangaroo things. The sculptures carved into sandstone required the placard’s context to interpret, but the remaining level of detail after decades of weathering was still astounding.
I learned that different plants have adapted to grow better on the East and West sides of the hills that were around Broken Hill, with the more heat-tolerant plants favouring the west and taller shrubs tending to grow in the bottoms of the hills, as shelter from wind and also getting better access to the rain that does fall. And that Golden Orb spiders exist, luckily not the hard way! There were plenty of them hanging out with their webs on the fences and signage.
Another really cool piece of culture was seeing old bush ovens at the park. I had just started the topic of Aboriginal Australian food in my year 11 class before finishing up term 1, so it was so neat to see what they actually looked like.
My Air BnB’s front yard had so many snails in it! Have a peek:
The last activity of the day was stargazing! I drove out to Mundi Mundi lookout in Silverton, and used the bed of my ranger as a viewing platform to take in the Milky Way. I stayed until the thunderstorm (that cancelled my official tour) rolled in. Feeling the vastness of everything beyond me in existence is one of my favourite things about the human experience.
It’s a (mostly) good thing the storm rolled in, otherwise I would have stayed out way too late pondering life. En route back to Broken Hill, I played around with the light bar and “spotties” on my ride – I never thought I’d say that they were excessively bright, but I couldn’t read the road signs because the reflection was too bright. So light bar off it was. The downside of the storm was that I had no electricity when I got home. Off to bed I went, because I was going to be on 7:45 AM train to Sydney.
See you soon!
Kate