Mario and Pat's Australian drive holiday

Day 2: 5/9/2014 Nygan NSW to Broken Hill, NSW Distance travelled: 620km including sightseeing detours.

Well we kicked off this morning at around 8am and decided that Nygan was not the place we wanted to have breakfast. Our 1^st stop was Cobar. It is a nice little town and decided that’s where we would stop for breakfast. We found a nice little Café/Bakery (Cobar Hot Bake) and had a great meal. All in all, our stop was just a little over an hour.

We then headed towards Broken Hill. From Nygan to Broken Hill we saw 100’s of wild goats grazing near the road. We also saw Emus and Wallabies, and some wild boar. Now we know we are out in the bush. Our drive was good and uneventful. The roads for the most part were very good and I had my cruise control siting just over 110km (the speed limit is 110km). It took us around 6 hours elapsed time.

In Broken Hill, we decided to do some sightseeing and went to a place called the Sculpture Symposium on the hill, at a place called the Living Dessert. They’re not kidding about Hill! It was a 1.2km trek up and up and up, but was worth it. We saw a number of wallabies on the way up, plus some mountain goats. In Broken Hill we went to a well advertised 1950s type Milk Bar called Bells. We had a milk shake and toured their small but nice 1950’s museum. I told Pat that a number of the display items were things we had when I was younger and I sure mum still has some around. Why are they classified as museum pieces? (…must be getting old.)

A little about Broken Hill: First interesting thing is that it uses the South Australia time zone (30 min behind Sydney), it also uses the 08 phone area code of SA, instead of 02 for NSW. The SA border is only about 50km west of here.

European explorers first came to Broken Hill in the 1830’s and the first mining company was founded in the 1880’s. The local mining industry has gone through numerous cycles of boom and bust. Today Broken Hill is a living, breathing time-capsule; an artefact that survives in the desert and waits to be rediscovered. Art deco shopfronts welcome customers straight out of a bygone age, and all over town are monuments to men and women who suffered and died so the town could survive.

But the mining machine that gave birth to Broken Hill still grinds away underneath, the mountainous slag heap, hauled from the earth for near 130 years, casting a shadow over town at the dawn of each day.

There are perhaps few places in the world where one can stand in a street at the urban boundary, some 20,000 people and all their dwellings immediately at one’s back, and view nothing but red desert in front, as far as the eye can see.

I will definitely put this on our revisit list when we have more time.

Tomorrow we head to Port Augusta in SA.