A very short drive from Broken Hill brought us to Silverton which was actually the first place silver was discovered around this area. However, once silver was found just up the road in Broken Hill the large operators set up there and Broken Hill became the big city leaving Silverton largely forgotten. 

Today Silverton is pretty much just a collection of a few art galleries and a pub in the middle of a vast expanse of red dirt. The art galleries are strange because, as far as I could tell, almost all the artists working in Silverton paint the same pictures of cartoon emus. Very odd, surely the person who thought them up first must get a bit miffed.
 Silverton is famous for something other than emu paintings and silver though, Mad Max was filmed there and it was easy to see why. There were almost no trees and the landscape looked pretty desolate as far as the eye could see. It was also hot, even though this was late autumn, with the sun beating down relentlessly on an area with very little shelter. 

When we were leaving the Royal Flying Doctor Service visitor centre in Broken Hill two coaches turned up from the Melbourne Probus Club. We patted ourselves on the back as we realised we had narrowly missed sharing our excellent tour with about seventy old people but our luck ran out in Silverton. We were about to go into the Silverton Hotel for a coffee when the coaches pulled up again and seventy octogenarians filed in ahead of us filling the place completely.
We decided not to bother and I had to be satisfied with hearing Ian's tales of his last visit there when a horse pushed its way through the saloon bar doors and made itself at home while he was having a beer. He mentioned this in one of the galleries and the owner told us that the horse was called Misty and he used to visit the pub all the time.
It was time to move on to our next stop in the opal mining town of White Cliffs, 250kms from Broken Hill. We decided to go the cross country way so the last 200kms were on dirt road.

 It was the worst road I have driven on so far and we had to keep a sharp lookout for sudden potholes and bits of road missing altogether, as well as avoiding kangaroos, emus, sheep, cows and a fox. Apparently the makers of driverless cars are having a real problem with Australia's unique outback driving conditions. It is the way kangaroos sort of fly through the air towards a collision that is causing the most head scratching. I hope they manage to solve the difficulty because Australia has more single person car accidents than anywhere else in the world, because of falling asleep, so the driverless car would appear to be a useful introduction. 

Anyway, we bumped and clattered into White Cliffs and found the caravan park which was great. It had good, clean facilities but was divided in two so the people who needed power were over by the shower block while those who didn't need power were over the other side where it was all red dirt surrounded by eucalyptus trees and felt more like camping out in the open. The other enjoyable bit about being in the non powered section was being able to watch the Serious Travellers set up. We just arrive, roll out the awning and chuck a couple of chairs outside and that is us set up but not so the Serious Traveller. They have complicated campers mounted on trailers with hydraulic lifting bits and endless, neatly organised plastic storage boxes in the back of the ute. The Serious Traveller always insists that their rig is incredibly quick and easy to set up but we sit with a glass of wine and watch them wherever we go and have yet to see any set up their camp in less than an hour, then they spend all evening going back and forth to the plastic boxes to get things before settling down for the night. The other bizarre thing we have noticed is they only ever seem to stay one night so the whole rigmarole is repeated in reverse as they pack up while we are having our breakfast.

 White Cliffs was a great stop. Some of the people live underground and we went to have a look at the famous underground hotel. It was fabulous, I don't know what I expected but the rooms were lovely and cool and somehow peaceful. I would recommend a flight up to Broken Hill, a drive to White Cliffs and a night or two in the underground hotel to anyone wanting to experience a different side of Australia to Sydney and the Barrier Reef. 

Opal mining towns seem to be a good place for people to go if they want to disappear, I am sure nobody would ask any questions if a new miner turned up and started working on a claim. Unlike in Lightning Ridge where the mining community were in evidence all the time usually having a jolly time in the pub, we didn't see many opal miners at all, even when we drove around the tourist route among all their little mines and homes, maybe they were meeting up underground somewhere. They did have a golf course though and, because it was just in the middle of the dirt, there was a little box positioned at the start containing information about the course and a little square of grass for driving the ball! 

 It was a bit of a wrench to tear ourselves away from glorious Menindee Lakes but the next planned stop was somewhere I had wanted to see since primary school - Broken Hill, home to The Flying Doctors and The School of the Air.
Broken Hill is a long way from anywhere in far west New South Wales. It is very close to the border with South Australia, so close in fact that it operates on South Australia time and is half an hour behind the rest of NSW.

 We arrived on Saturday afternoon to find the place pretty much shut as we might have expected an Australian city to be in 1982 but it came as a bit of a surprise in 2017 so we went off in search of a caravan park. There were two in the city (Broken Hill is officially a city but really is the size of a smallish town by UK standards) and we chose the friendlier of the two, Lake View. It should really have been called scrapyard view but it was ok if we didn't look in that direction.

 Broken Hill came to be because silver was found in the area and miners headed there to make their fortune. It is known as Silver Town and the roads were all named after minerals, Bromide, Sulphide, Kaolin, Beryl etc. and, because it is so far from anywhere, houses were originally built from any materials that were available and some of them are still standing.It is also home to the Big Ant and the Big Bench, there are a lot of ants there but I failed to grasp the connection with the bench. 

There was a huge mine at the back of the town with massive heaps of tailings piled up behind the buildings, as someone who remembers the Aberfan disaster, I found this a bit alarming but I am sure with present day health and safety regulations it must have been safer than it looked. We drove up to the mine visitors centre (shut) and had a look at the miners' memorial which was a splendid structure made of rusty metal with the names of all those killed while working in the mine and the manner of their deaths. Looking at the sheer numbers and bizarre ways in which they perished certainly reminded us what a tough life this was. In the early 20th century, if a miner was killed a siren would sound and a black flag was raised for the people of the town to see, so all the families of the miners must have been worried sick it might be their loved one until news filtered down naming the victim!

 After all this deep thought we fancied a drink so went to Mario's Palace Hotel, featured in Priscilla Queen of the Desert. A previous owner, Mario, painted the whole of the interior with friezes based on old masters and the pub is now the hub for the Broken Heel Drag Festival. The pub hosts drag bingo once a month and there were a couple of people in drag having a drink while we were there. Of all the things I had thought went on in the outback, going for a beer in drag wasn't one of them. The pub was fabulous, apart from the friezes, the place was dripping with glitter balls and there were sparkly shoes and tinsel curtains everywhere. 

 Next stop was The Royal Flying Doctor Service. The visitor centre was excellent and we were taken on a tour by a very knowledgeable guide who was surprised we were familiar with their work in the UK. My vision of the Flying Doctors was all about them landing on remote properties to rescue injured farmers or deliver babies but, although they do that, the main part of their work is providing clinics to remote towns. The plane loads up with a couple of doctors, nurses, a dentist, an alcohol and drugs counsellor and family planning advisor and they set up for the day in a pub or church hall. All remote towns and farms have a medical box with the contents numbered for emergencies so they can phone the Flying Doctor centre and be talked through administering treatment until the doctor can get there.
The last visit in Broken Hill was to see the School of the Air.

 This can be seen in action but must be booked in advance, which we had not done, it was enough for me just to see where it took place though. I was fascinated by the idea of the School of the Air when I was a child and thought it would be wonderful to sit in my pyjamas eating crisps during my lessons safe in the knowledge that the teacher would not know.

 After we had waved goodbye to Willandra and our friends we had to backtrack to Griffith to retrieve Monty from the kennels before continuing on our adventure.
Griffith is a very large town and serves as the big, go to place for remote communities in this part of New South Wales. There is a huge poster at the entrance to the town boasting that one in every four glasses of wine produced in Australia comes from Griffith. That seemed like a bit of a bold statement but the first two wineries we drove past were Yellow Tail and De Bertolli so maybe not an exaggeration after all. 

Monty was mighty relieved to see us and we decided to stay a night in Griffith rather than pressing on further that day. There was not a great choice of caravan parks and we plumped for one right in the centre which was a bit on the trashy side but quite cheap, $20 unpowered which was pretty good for a town centre. We wondered about the big gates that were locked at nightfall and all the digital locks on the showers and toilets but didn't think much of it until it started to become apparent that the park seemed to be home to people the council could not find homes for - mainly because nobody wanted to live next door to them! We left pretty sharpish in the morning and carried on our way past cotton fields again heading for Booligal along a 50km dirt road. There wasn't much there apart from the Duke of Edinburgh pub so we pressed on because we needed to get some more kilometres under our belts in order to reach our next target destination of Menindee by the following night.

 The Cobb Highway took us through the Long Paddock where sheep, cows and goats just wandered into the road when they felt like it and past Mossgiel which had an information point so we got out to have a look. Mossgiel was once a boom town but, because of the combined pressures of drought, typhoid, a mouse plague and an egg shortage it all fell apart and now only one house remains. 
 Eventually we rolled into Ivanhoe which is the kind of small town which usually offers free camping. This little town didn't however and there was only one place to stay so we had to pay $23 for an unpowered site which was a bit steep for a town in the middle of nowhere. All was forgiven however, when we sampled the showers which were scorching hot and wonderful, very welcome as it became really cold there as evening approached.
The following morning we had a bit of an explore and found that Ivanhoe was struggling. There were closed shops including the most beautiful store with old fashioned cabinets and signs still visible on all the sections leading the customer to Haberdashery, Hats, Coats, Frocks, Mercery and Manchester! Probably the funniest of these terms is Manchester which is the name for bed and table linen but it is still used all across Australia and we regularly hear it on TV adverts. The most worrying closed shop though was the grocery store. This little town was in the middle of nowhere and there was not anywhere apart from the petrol station to buy food. The locals were trying to drum up enough support to start a community grocery store, I hope they succeed.
 The next 210km of our journey was along an unsealed road. Driving along dirt roads certainly keeps you awake, it was a very long, straight route with flat landscape as far as the eye could see so a tarmac road could be quite sleep inducing. We were driving alongside the Indian Pacific Railway but did not see a single train and we only encountered seven cars on the whole journey to Menindee Lakes. 
Once we arrived we headed for Lake Pamamaroo and set up camp for free on the edge of the lake. It was sensational, the most beautiful place I have ever camped. The lakes were full because it was a wet summer in far west NSW and there was an astonishing array of waterbirds. Spoonbills, herons, egrets, cormorants and even pelicans make their home there which I was stunned by because how did they know to travel inland to find this place?
 There were plenty of other birds too and the sunsets were to die for, we could not believe our luck.
Although we were free camping, a proper toilet was provided in the nearby Burke and Wills campsite, so named because Menindee was the last place Burke and Wills camped before they set off on their ill fated trek to the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1860.  They succeeded on their mission but perished on the return journey when they reached their camp only to find that their support team had given up waiting for them and left just 9 hours earlier.
 The town has a population of 900 and is a mix of beautiful and hideous buildings. They certainly make the most of the Burke and Wills connection as there are references to them everywhere and there was a big memorial on a rock outside the pub where they spent the night, presumably their last in proper beds. After a quick look around we headed back to our gorgeous camp on the edge of the lake and spent the next few days trying to get pictures of birds and sunsets. 

 The main purpose of our latest jaunt was to show our friends one of our favourite places, Willandra National Park. Dogs are not allowed in national parks so we left Parkes at the crack of dawn in order to deliver Monty to the kennels in Yoogali, just outside Griffith, before it closed at 11am.
We drove past mile after mile of cotton fields with hundreds of bales of cotton lined up ready for collection. Farmers are not too pleased about the introduction of cotton farming into Australia as it requires a massive amount of water, a commodity that is very precious in these remote areas. Huge cotton producing corporations take so much from the rivers that farms and vineyards further along the river are being starved of the water they have depended on for years.
As we traveled further west the properties became progressively bigger and further apart until all that could be seen from the road was a postbox and driveway every so often leading to a station (very large farm) that was completely out of sight. 
Once Monty had been dragged protesting into the kennels we headed for Hillston where we had arranged to rendezvous with Tim and Virginia before hitting the dirt road into Willandra.

 On the way we passed a sign for Murriwagga - home of the Black Stump, well we couldn't resist that could we? There are plenty of things that are supposed to indicate where the outback begins and the Black Stump is one of them so we stopped for a closer look. The Black Stump Hotel stood in the centre of the tiny town and there was a little trail of information boards to enjoy. I had assumed the Black Stump was a burnt tree trunk or something but, upon studying one of the boards I discovered it was a woman who had burned to death while cooking on a camp fire! Apparently when describing the event, her husband said he returned to camp to find his wife was nothing but a black stump! 

 Onto Hillston which is a very small town but, because there are no other towns for miles around, it services a large number of the stations in the vicinity so has a branch of each of the main banks on its tiny little high street. It looks quite odd really because we are so used to seeing towns without banks as society relies more and more on internet banking but the internet is a bit of an issue on many of the properties so being able to visit a bank is essential I suppose even if it does take hours to get there. 
It took an hour or so to reach the outskirts of Willandra along the unmade, red dirt road, then a further half an hour to reach our accommodation.

 Driving on unmade roads was alarming at first, especially towing a caravan, but it was surprising how quickly we got used to it. There were signs warning drivers not to use the roads in wet conditions, the penalty for doing so was to pay for the repairs to the road after. The residents in these kind of areas live with the prospect of being cut off for long periods of time, in fact, we had been planning this trip for a while but the national park had been closed for months because of rain.
Eventually we reached the buildings on the property. The main building is a glorious homestead complete with schoolhouse which is set on a billabong alive with spoonbills, cormorants and many other birds and fish. The homestead was derelict when Ian first came here but was restored in the late 1990s. There is also a huge shearing shed, rams' shed, shearers accommodation, ranger's cottage and the cottage we were staying in. 

 The cottage was basic but comfortable and we even had our own pet frog in the outside loo. We could have done without the Mouse Spider but Willandra itself was as wonderful as I remembered. It was amazing to look out from the veranda over the flat landscape and know that everything you could see to the horizon and beyond belonged to that one property.

It was a very famous sheep station in its heyday and was called Big Willandra, specialising in raising huge rams that were much sought after by other sheep breeders, the descendents of those rams are still around today.  Back in the 1920s and 30s bullock trains were used to transport the fleece to be sold after shearing and it took three days for them just to reach the edge of the station. At night the stars are so clear and bright they seem to form a canopy overhead and it is just marvelous to feel the relaxation of being there with no TV, phones, internet etc. 

Ian and I love to get up just as it is getting light and drive around the motor trail to see the kangaroos and emus. The real prize is to see the big red kangaroos and they only seem to show themselves very early. 
We had a glorious few days of walks, wildlife spotting, barbecues and pretending to be the owners of the homestead and even found our entry in the visitors' book from 2005! 

 We left behind the delights of the Trundle Abba Festival preparations and carried on our journey toward Parkes. The road we were following was called The Bogan Way and stretched from Albert to Bogan Gate. For my English readers, bogan is a derogatory term used in Australia for a person who, shall we say does not aspire to finishing their education or having any kind of career and lives in a messy house lowering the tone of the neighbourhood, you get the picture. Bogan Gate itself is a lovely little town but we found a house in the middle with a front yard full of junk and surmised that must be where the bogan lives! 

As we rolled into Parkes the rain started to pour down, it was freezing too and the owner of the campsite boasted that the temperature was set to drop to 4 degrees overnight, we haven't experienced cold like this since we moved to Australia so had to head into town to buy fleeces. Suitably rugged up we set off to explore. Australian towns are very good at providing information centres and we have got into the habit of going there first so we don't miss anything. We had come to Parkes to see the famous radio telescope but discovered at the information centre that it is an Elvis town! Needless to say Parkes hosts an Elvis Festival but there was Elvis memorabilia everywhere. Just when I thought it couldn't get any better I discovered that this part of NSW has a trail of decorated rhinos, a bit like the elephant trail in London a few years ago and, you've guessed it, Parkes has an Elvis rhino! 

It was still lashing down with rain when we went to bed but the sun was out the following morning although it was very chilly again because Parkes is pretty high up. We set off to check out the radio telescope which was a delight. The telescope features in the film The Dish and was made famous because of its role in the Apollo missions. The Parkes telescope was the one communicating with the Apollo 11 moon landing at the moment when Neil Armstrong stepped on to the surface of the moon. The visitor centre was excellent and free to enter, there was a $6 fee to see three films about space exploration and telescopes which was well worth it. Then there were plenty of interactive displays and lots of information suitable for those of us who do not have a physics A level.

 The dish itself was sensational, so massive it was hard to imagine how it could turn if there was any wind about. We gazed at it for some time then bought a coffee and gazed at it some more, I cannot recommend this visit highly enough. 

 Apologies for the lack of blogging but we have just returned from a three week, 2700km trip. The original idea was to meet our friends Tim and Virginia in Parkes then go on to one of our favourite spots, Willandra National Park with them for a few days. It suddenly dawned on us that we could make a much longer trip of it (we haven't really got our heads around this retirement lark) as we would be driving a long way so we may as well see some more places while we were out that far.
We left in glorious sunshine on 24th April and headed off along the Golden Highway through the mining areas in the Hunter Valley. It's a dangerous road this as it passes between army firing ranges flying red flags warning not to enter - possibility of death, then as soon as that danger was passed signs appeared on the roadside advising when the next mine blasting was to take place.
We breathed sighs of relief as we got through unscathed and took in the scenery. Beautiful, green countryside with rolling hills but every few kilometres a huge open cut mine created a blot on the otherwise perfect landscape. The view soon changed to manicured, emerald green horse pastures as we passed some of the best known racehorse training stables and studs in the country.
It was time to look for our first coffee stop and Denman fitted the bill perfectly, it is a smart town with plenty of cafes in amongst the hunting supplies and cattle food shops. Coffee over we drove off refreshed through a massive area of blackened trees and fields, it went on for about 45 minutes and we found out later it was caused by a huge bushfire in February that destroyed 17 properties which is a lot because the farms out here are huge so the houses are a very long way apart. 

Next town was Dunedoo. In stark contrast to Denman, Dunedoo looks like a town barely hanging on by its fingernails, it is boosted a little because people visit there because of the name but it really looked to be struggling. By now we were driving alongside a railway line dotted with grain silos every few kilometres and we spotted an occasional, very slow grain train.
We were heading for Ballimore which turned out to be a tiny, friendly little place where we could park the caravan free overnight opposite the pub in return for buying a drink. The locals were very keen to make us welcome and were happy to help when we asked where the nearest Anzac Day service would be the following morning. An elderly man gave us some very country directions to nearby Gollan, which nobody but a resident could possibly have followed so another chap said he would be passing on his way there in the morning and we could follow him.

 Anzac Day is a big deal here and almost everyone attends a dawn service, we were in luck though, the service we were being taken to was at 11am. Our guide turned up as promised and we followed him to a field in the middle of nowhere with a war memorial and a little community hall which had not changed much since Mabel and Garry were there in the old photo hanging up inside. The hall was buzzing with ladies laying out trays of cakes and giving out cups of tea, they would not accept a donation but insisted we tuck in. The service itself was attended by about 80 people from the surrounding farms (there was not even a village here) and we were invited to join them after for a barbecue! 
Tempting as the offer was we decided we ought to press on through Narromine and Dubbo to Albert and the Rabbit Trap Pub - we had been looking forward to this. It was a bit grim actually and the pub was the only thing there but we couldn't go past this stop.

 We got out pretty sharpish in the morning and pushed on to Trundle which was great on a number of levels. First it had the widest street I have ever seen and the hotel boasted the longest wooden balcony in New South Wales but, best of all they were gearing up for their annual Abba festival.

 It was incredible, the festival happens every year and goes on for several days featuring Bjorn Again, The Kransky Sisters and many more. While we were chortling at the Abba shop window displays we discovered that last year the festival brought half a million dollars to the town! It was a fantastic example of what a resourceful council can do to support the small businesses that might otherwise find it tough in a country town.