Days 63-69 Broken Hill and the road back home

Days 63-69 Broken Hill and the road back home

We arrived in Broken Hill and were reminded by the signs that it was the home of Pro Hart. Of course we were going to go and check out his gallery. From our childhood we remember the infamous advert with Pro splashing food on the carpet and creating one of his dragonflies.

His gallery was impressive, with his studio still set up how he left it when he died with a dragonfly picture still to be completed. It is three storeys high and paintings everywhere! There are two original Rembrandt paintings in the entry. Such great and amazing paintings by Pro with so much variation to the next one. It was definitely one of my highlights of this trip.

We also visited an old disused silver mine and were able to travel underground exploring the tunnels and seeing how they extracted it over a hundred years ago. We were well equipped with safety hats and headlights. It was an amazing experience.

After the mine we drove a short distance up the road to Silverton where Mad Max 2 was filmed. It's a tiny town.

Next it was back on the road to Kimba. Which as stated by the sign there it is halfway across Australia. As you can see we are definitely on our way back home.

After a night stop over in Kimba we travelled to Border Village just inside the South Australia border and our last stop was a night in Coolgardie.

Finally we made it home on thursday, one day early. the girls were so relieved and marvelled at the space in our house after being confined in a caravan for two and a half months.

Well I must say I would definitely do this trip again, in a heart beat. We had such a great time and really started to enjoy each others company a lot more. We have learnt so many things about our country and the special places it holds.

Thank you for taking time to read our blog and following our adventure east and back. Of course there may be more trips to come but not for a couple of years.

Bye for now,
 
Christen xxx

Days 62-63 - Cobar

Days 62-63 - Cobar

Well we arrived in Cobar to stay one night. Lulled into a false sense of security with all the great caravan parks we have stayed at our bikes were stolen as we didn’t lock them up. Yep, some bored brats took mine and Jades bikes. Thank goodness they left the girls bikes. The caravan park manager was very apologetic and claimed it had never happened before as there is only one way in. Obviously that doesn’t stop thieving criminals! Oh well thank goodness Jade had his very expensive bike insured…

The only touring of Cobar we did was looking for our bikes. Sadly we weren’t likely to find them lying on the road. We put in a police report and gave details. I seriously doubt the person riding Jade’s bike is anywhere near tall enough to ride it and will look like a total idiot. But I can’t be too bitter by wishing them falls and spills with bleeding sores and burning palms because we were silly enough not to lock them up.

So we had to get back on the road and head for Broken Hill with a short stop in Wilcannia for lunch.

Days 59-62 – Dubbo

Days 59-62 – Dubbo

Dubbo was a surprise. We ended up staying 3 nights at the Big 4. It was great and we met up with some lovely people and the girls made a lot of friends. We first went to the Taronga Western Plains Zoo. You can drive your car around the whole zoo and get out and walk to the animals, then hop back in and drive to the next lot. The fencing is designed so you don’t feel like there is a cage or anything between you and the animals. We all loved it. We even organised to feed the giraffes, which was Lily’s favourite thing to do. They had 4 baby giraffes and 8 adults. There was so many animals at the zoo including gibbons, elephants, all types of antelopes, lions, tigers and even more animals, too many to list, and it is definitely a must visit place if you are ever that way. Chloe loved the meerkats (there was two meerkat babies as well) and the lemurs. I think she could watch them for hours. Emma loved to watch to monkeys and took lots of photos of them climbing and playing (secretly I think she’s our little monkey and can relate).

So we decided the next day to go to Parkes to see ‘THE DISH’ from the movie with the same name. The dish was used to transmit satellite images of the first walk on the moon in 1969 by Neil Armstrong and crew. It was interesting but not exciting and the girls didn’t have patience to watch long movies about the dish and its functionality. The actual town of Parkes was lovely, you need to travel a little further to get there because the dish is in the middle of nowhere.

Now its back on the road again. We stopped in Nyngan for lunch and back in the car to Cobar.