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Woke up to a grey blowy morning, wasn’t part of the plan, handed out the screens for an hour’s more peace in warmth of trailer.
Matt puzzled out how to setup the annex with no instructions, am sure those will turn up at some point. I trialed the portable washing machine which will be a great asset until it breaks and leaves us more room inside the car!
After some campsite domesticity and lunch on fresh white bread kids bought from servo down road (they know fresh bread will not be readily available soon), we headed out for a five hour tour of Broken Hill. Decided we will probably come back here at some point so in the name of expediency have sacrificed a lot of what B Hill has to offer.
First up was the Royal Flying Dr base out at the airport, we all loved this, they showed us their movie and walked us around the base. Kids most impressed that last year RFD’s flew the distance to the moon and back 7 times! Stu began his adamant campaign that we need to buy things at each souvenir outlet which was not cool to say the least, although don’t mind supporting this wonderful organisation. Loved the re-enactment of 1950’s farmer’s wife exchange about his punctured lung after a tractor rolling on him, v tangible reminder of how tough people’s lives were and still are in isolation.
Next to the equally interesting White’s Mining and Mineral Museum. This guy is an old miner who is also an artist and has opened a v quirky museum with his wife. He’s recreated the dimensions, darkness and timber inside a mine shaft and gives a talk about all the minerals mined in the area that he uses crushed up on his artworks which cover every wall. He talked us through the history of mining in BH using his artworks and we also saw a dodgy 1983 Union Video tracing the history as well. Kids loved lifting the different weights of the rocks, I was surprised how interested in the minerals they were.
Weather was foul outside, but we went to the desert sculptures about 12km out of town. Perched on top of a hill with 360 deg views, think they normally are spectacular and a v spiritual place but today it was freezing and wind whipping everyone to pieces, so we had a quick squiz and went back to car. Matt then suggested we do the 2km cultural walk around the park which was a bit more sheltered, mummy needed some convincing and started a bit later, but ended up being most enjoyable. Home to campsite after v full 5 hours to some ‘berettos’ and to eat all our tomatoes and as much fruit as we could manage before border crossing next day!
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