My parents came all the way from the other side of the world
to visit me in Australia. I am grateful
that they traveled that long distance and changed their holiday plans – missing
out on my little cousins opening presents and celebrating some family news – to
see me. They flew into Sydney; however, their
iconic vision of Australia is that of the Outback, not of a large city. I looked up what areas are considered to be Outback
in New South Wales and thought that the Broken Hill area sounded
interesting. I passed that suggestion
onto my parents, but I didn't think they would give it a go, given the travel
time. Broken Hill is located in the far
western part of New South Wales. It
takes 13-14 hours to drive there from Sydney, because NSW is a large state (more
area than Texas). Yet, they were also
intrigued by Broken Hill, so off we went.
This drive to the Outback was a bit different than my
previous experience. When I drove
through Queensland on Flinders Highway and in the Northern Territory on Stuart
Highway, I saw thousands of termite mounds, heaps of cattle, and a couple of
wild camels. When we drove out to Broken
Hill, we saw no termite mounds, a few cattle, and no camels. Instead we saw some sheep, heaps of wild
goats, a couple dozen emus, and a few kangaroos. This area of Australia is southeast of the
dingo fence, which was constructed in the late 19th century to
protect the fertile lands from dingoes and prevent sheep losses from this
predator. Ranches on the other side of
the fence are more likely to have cattle, which are less bothered by the
presence of dingoes.
Broken Hill is a mining city with the world’s largest and
richest silver-lead-zinc deposits. The
mining operations, while still running, had peaked long ago, so tourism is a
growing industry there. We picked on
some of Broken Hill’s character during our visit. Because the NSW government once did not properly
acknowledge Broken Hill, the isolated area adopted the same time zone, area
code, and sports allegiance as South Australia.
Broken Hill was one of the few places in Australia where you could
legally play (and gamble on) a coin game called “Two Up” all year long. I hoped to check it out, but the venue had
apparently just lost its license. The
streets in Broken Hill are named after minerals and chemicals. My dad thinks this convention is nerdy, but I
think it is rather clever. Although, a
quick visit to the geology museum did show off more of the city’s nerdy side;
there, they proudly display one of the earliest atomic absorption
spectrometers. It helped the mining
company cut identification time of 3 days down to 1 hour.
We spent a few days checking out Broken Hill and the
surrounding area. Broken Hill brought
together some sculptors from around the world to for a symposium to create its
now famous sculptures on a hilltop.
Nearby Silverton is nearly a ghost town with its ruins. I think the only current occupants are some café/shop
owners, artists, and a donkey. When we
exited a little art gallery, a donkey was waiting outside on the porch. It took a long drink from a bucket of water,
stared at us for a little while, and then slowly made its way to another part
of town. Nearby Silverton is a lookout
(Mundi Mundi), where you supposedly can see the curvature of the Earth. The conditions were not ideal for us, but it
was still impressive to see the massive plains.
We signed up for a 1-day tour to visit Mutawintji National
Park. Besides our tour guide and the
park ranger, we were probably the only ones in the entire park that day. Although the tour focused on the indigenous
art in the park, we also saw a lot of wildlife.
We stopped to check out this bearded dragon that was basking in the road. My mom was only a little scared to stand next
to it for a photo to share with her school kids. Throughout the day, we saw many emus (some
with chicks!) and 3 different types of kangaroo (Red, Eastern Grey, and Euro, a
wallaroo that lives on the rocky ground).
The rock art was quite impressive. First, we checked out the carvings, which is
an older form of art. The first photo shows
a chiseled emu. These stencils, perhaps
10,000 years old, are quite unusual, because they are filled in rather than
just outlines. At some point, the main
form of art switched over to stencils and painting in caves with ochre. It was a big deal if you were permitted to
stencil your hand in a cave. Notice that
all the stencils are of left hands. The
smaller stencils are close to the bottom, because that was the height kids
could reach.
We finished up our trip to the Outback with a short visit to
Kinchega National Park. It includes some
of the Menindee Lakes. I heard that Lake
Menindee currently holds 7 times the amount of water in Sydney Harbour. I have seen the Harbour from different
angles, including via a ferry ride to Manly.
The Harbour is an impressive size, so I don’t know if 7 times is
accurate. Regardless, the lake has its
own beauty.
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