Travels thro Outback New South Wales & Queensland

[Bob]

Ginnie, my wife, has Long Service Leave available to her.

Every worker in Australia, working for the same company or government service, is entitled to "Long Service Leave" (L.S.L.) after 10 faithful years.

You get 3 months holiday on full pay.

You can double this time and get 6 months holidays, but then it's only on half pay. . . . . . . Your choice!

Anyhow . . . . Ginnie has been tapping into her L.S.L. lately, so that's how we've managed to trek across Australia and go places every few months.

This trip is across to a spot called Maryborough, on the Pacific coast in Queensland.

We're travelling with her sister + husband and her older brother + his wife.

We all came together from various parts of South Australia at a place called Peterborough in Sth Australia. Ginnie's cousin and husband, Alan, have moved down from living up in Darwin for most of their lives.

We spent a couple of days with them, filling up most of the back yard with caravans and 4WDs and VW Kombi vans.

We'd have "Happy Hour" at 5 pm, and as the evening progressed, the stories would be more and more unreal by the hour.

Anyhow, we went for a drive first day to a deserted township called Dawson. The old graveyard and town hall, hotel (pub) and church was left, but little else. . . . . . a sad reminder of the dreams of the early settlers to Australia and the hardships they faced.

Later we drove out to a lookout where we could see the surrounding countryside for miles

After leaving Peterborough, we headed north east thro isolated countryside . . . . Australia's Outback . . . . over the border to Broken Hill, where in the 1870s, silver was discovered by a couple of blokes digging wells.

The rush was soon on and the township shot up to have thousands of inhabitants within 10 years.

The company formed to extract the silver and other minerals was called the "Broken Hill Proprietary" or B.H.P. which, over a century later, merged with Billiton to form the biggest mining company in the world.

The road thro north east South Australia, on the way to Broken Hill

Outside of Broken Hill, some 30 kms to the north west is an old mining town called "Silverton", established in 1883.

Nowadays it only has a pub, a few old buildings housing art galleries, etc.

Feeding one of the local camels at the art gallery

Back in 1979, Mel Gibson, who was American born but grew up in Australia (his dad's mother was from Melbourne!) starred in a film called "Mad Max"

It was filmed around Silverton and the car is this one

A lot of the miners that worked the mines not only in Australia, but throughout the old British Empire, came from the far south west corner of England called "Cornwall"

A Cornish miner's cottage. It's amazing that these humble homes housed a miner, his wife and often many kids

About 4 kms to the west is the edge of the ridge of hills called the Barrier Ranges where the silver was first discovered. You can look out on the open plains towards South Australia for miles and miles. You can see so far, that many claim you can actually see the curvature of the Earth slightly from this look-out.

About 10 kms to the north of Broken Hill are a series of sculpures. These were made by various sculptors from around the world, commissioned by the Broken Hill council. They took 60 days each to carve these images out of blank stone

This is called "Motherhood". We all believe in that, don't we??

Tomorrow, Friday 6th June, we trek off east across the north of New South Wales. Rain has hit this part of Australia. We had planned to stay at a cattle station, but the rain has put plans on hold, as we can't get thro some roads with our caravans. We are making up our trip as we go along, but we intended to follow the Darling River north into southern Queensland up as far as a town called Charleville, then head due east for 1 000 kms or so until we hit the coast around Maryborough.

I've brought my new Apple Mac along for the ride, together with my mobile internet modem with Telstra's Next G network . . . . the best and most extensive coverage throughout Australia.

More later, as we get new countryside for taking photos.

[Christina]

Thanks Bob, for this journal. The pictures are beautiful. Please post some more pictures and writings about the rest of the trip. It is really interesting.

Christina

[Nilo]

Travel safe Bob and thank you for the journal.

[AllisonW]

Wow, Bob, your pics are beautiful. I would love to do a road trip in Oz. Enjoy the rest of your holiday!

(P.S: LSL sounds like the best thing ever!!!!)

Allison

[GerhardinOz]

Maaaaaan! You wouldn’t know if the Mad Max car is for sale by any chance?

[somarie]

Hi Bob

I always find your journals very interesting and informative!! Please keep us updated on your trip and enjoy!!

Sonja

[Conrad]

Hi Bob

Thanks once again for sharing your travels with us.Have a good one Mate and please keep on sending.

Chow Conrad