It has been some time since we put out a travel blog, and I am wondering where to start. May 2020 was supposed to see us travelling to Western Australia to go sea kayaking and visit Ningaloo Reef again. Covid 19 put paid to that plan. Many states shut or restricted border access, with Western Australia and Queensland being particularly strict about not allowing people in. Western Australia's border is still closed and we can only hope it is open by May 2021 when we are going to try travelling there again.
Covid 19 has been fairly well contained here as Australia was able to close all international borders. Things are opening up a bit, and we are able to travel to some other states, so we decided to do some travel in western NSW and South Australia.
We left on October 19 and headed south. It had been quite dry for the last month and a half. Because we decided on a camping trip, heavy rain was predicted. Our first stop was Wollomombi Falls, a beautiful campsite near the tallest falls in NSW. The scenery is dramatic, but unfortunately there was only a trickle of water going over the falls. We did some pleasant hikes along the rim of the canyon that the falls tumble over.
We left off camping due to the predicted rain and travelled to Tuncurry, a seaside town. We rented a cabin for a few days. Not only was this nice and dry, it also gave us time to finish a few items of business we had left hanging when we started travelling.
Our next stop was with friend Jenny in Newcastle, a large former steel city about 1.5 hours north of Sydney. It has beautiful beaches, and the wild weather with big seas and horizontal rain while we were there, gave us some spectacular photographs. We also enjoyed exploring the little suburb around Jenny's with its various shops, old miners' houses and local pubs.
From Newcastle we travelled inland to Dubbo, probably best known in Australia for its remarkable zoo. It was built with large open spaces, the fences often hidden by berms and ditches, so you almost feel like you are seeing the animals in the wild. And often you are, as animals like kangaroo and ibis have moved into the open areas of the zoo and roam freely.
The zoo participates in a number of programes to breed and release endangered animals back into the wild. These include Taki (wild Mongolian horses) and Bongos, a beautiful striped antelope. There is a bike path (5K) from the city to the zoo, and then you can ride your bikes throughout the whole of the zoo. We had a beautiful sunny day, and had a picnic lunch that a large group of aggressive Apostle Birds wanted to share. We were not in a sharing mood.
After Dubbo removed on to a Gundabooka National Park, a small park near Bourke. On our way there we passed through Nyngan, a small town in the Bogan Shire that decided to build a Big Bogan to draw tourists. (See above). Gundabooka had some good hiking trails and a small but interesting aboriginal art site, situated in a valley with a near permanent stream that made it a small oasis for the original inhabitants.
From Gundabooka we moved further west in NSW, and spent a long day travelling to the Kinchella National Park around the Menindee Lakes area. This area originally had a lot of marshes and lakes fed by big rivers coming through Queensland and NSW. Over time, water use upstream plus the last few years of severe drought have left the lakes very low. They are famous for an abundance of bird life, and are quite remote.
We set up camp at Emu Lake. It is a bit off season for visitors here, as it is heading into summer and is usually quite hot. We had variable weather most of the trip, and it was often surprisingly cold, especially at night. Many roads and access to some areas of the park were closed. But we spent a very interesting day at the Kinchella Wool Shed (see below). The wool shed is a historic building that is part of the station that was established her in the late 1800s. They ran a huge operation that raised sheep, but was also almost a small village as the station had to be self support and feed, house, and take care of all the inhabitants. Over 6 million sheep were sheared at the shed from the late 1800s until 1967 when the holding was passed to National Parks. The environmental changes from climate and sheep eventually made the station uneconomical, and it is now a reserve and historic site.
Our campground was windy and sandy, with scrubby vegetation, but it felt very much like "real" Australian outback. Other campsites along the river were under large, shady River Red Gums, and had views of the water.
Unfortunately, about this time we started having problems with both our camping fridge and camper battery and electric system, and we had to leave Menindee Lakes a bit early. Our trip was forced to take on a more urban aspect as we could not camp without power. So the remainder of our stays will be in caravan parks.
We stopped in Broken Hill for a few days. Broken Hill is a mining town, for silver, copper and lead. It is the home of BHP (Broken Hill Proprietary), a conglomerate otherwise known as "The Big Australian". The mine site and waste material border the town, and there is a dramatic memorial to over 900 miners who died since mining started in the late 1800s. (see below)
It is also home to many artists and galleries, people being inspired by the outback landscape and the stunning skies. On top of that, it is home to the Palace Hotel, one of the main settings of the movie Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. The hotel lobby is painted in murals, and it has an excellent dining room where we went for dinner one night. In short, Broken Hill had much to entertain us for a few days.
Outside of Broken Hill itself there is a sculpture walk in the desert, the result of an international sculpture symposium in the early1990s. It is part of a "Living Desert" reserve and has some short hikes as well as the sculpture walk. Two of the sculptures below:
Thirty kilometres north of Broken Hill is Silverton, a tiny village that is all that remains of the town where silver was first discovered and mined in the area. It is mainly a tourist destination now, with a famous pub, a great bakery, numerous artist studios, and the Mad Max 2 Museum. Mad Max 2 was filmed around Silverton and the museum is fascinating. We spent a whole day in Silverton, wandering from gallery to museum and learning about the history of the town.
Our last leg, at least as far as this post is concerned, was from Broken Hill to Clare in South Australia. Clare town is the heart of the Clare Valley Wine Region, and of course, the reasons to visit here needs no explanation. The wineries are quite close together, and there is an excellent bike path called The Riesling Trail that runs from one end of town to the other and passes many wineries. The trail is wide and smooth, sheltered by large shady trees and the grade is easy as it is a former railway track. We spent today visiting four winery cellar doors, sampling the produce, buying wine and having lunch at Mr Mick's. If the weather holds, tomorrow will be more of the same.
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