Just a month after leaving Chiangmai I was driving around the border of New South Wales and South Australia, visiting places that I’d only ever heard of in movies or on the news. Leaving on Monday morning I the drive through the Riverina area took me to Mildura where I found a motel for the night before driving on to Broken Hill. Clearly, I hadn’t done enough homework as I was surprised to find myself at the confluence of the Murray and Darling rivers – a throwback to early Geography lessons. It was in the towns near here that I saw the first native Australians (aborigines) on this visit.
The towns were small but surrounded by lush farming land, benefiting from the rains after ten years of drought. Sadly, another month on, that rain has become a disadvantage as floods ravage the plains for the second time this year. That has meant farmers suffering almost as much from the rain as from the drought and has left many disappointed after what promised to be a really good harvest.
Everyone had told me the drive would be boring, but I found it fascinating to drive past so many different areas. despite the vast distances with few houses or communities, the road wound uphill and down and had just as many bends as any other: plenty to keep the driver awake!
On first sight, ‘Silver City’ as Broken Hill has been known over the years, is much bigger than the one-street town I had expected. The main street is a strange mix of older and more modern buildings, sometimes merged into one. I was fortunate to find a great room in the old building which was once the Stock Exchange and which had been decorated sensitively. Service was great as was the advice given.
I decided to stay for two nights here in order to enjoy as much as possible the next day, so set off quite early for Silverton, home of ‘Mad Max’ movies and ‘A Town Like Alice’. Here I found what I had been expecting:
The semi-arid landscape was much greener than one would usually expect and the locals were telling everyone that, as a result, the filming of ‘Mad Max IV’ planned for February 2011 had had to be postponed until 2012. Sorry, fans – another calamity caused by 2011’s climate changes and all that unexpected rain!
Back in Broken Hill, a visit to the Silver City Mint with its largest painting saw me buying a pendant in local silver as my ‘souvenir’ of the area and a trip up to the mine’s visitors’ centre provided the opportunity to take photos of the town landscapes and the longest train I had seen – until the next day when I think I saw one twice as long!
The only disappointment was to miss the stone sculptures in the desert: it just seemed silly to be walking around an out of town area on my own in the dark. However, I did go out and see the flora, including the sturt desert pea.
So it was after a very full and enjoyable day that I prepared to leave in the morning and make my way to Adelaide and friendly faces. I was looking forward to getting to know the area a bit better than last time we were there. Again, this was a drive I was looking forward to as it was a new area of the country.
As it turned out this drive was much more what I had expected when driving from Wagga to Broken Hill – vast empty stretches of road surrounded by red soil and a few clumps of green desert grass with the occasional small settlement and railway station.
Nearer my destination, however, there were, once again, rich farm lands and the vineyards of the Barossa Valley which I was to revisit with Naomi the following weekend.
Living the Journey 