Heading towards Broken Hill, we stopped in Wilcannia to check the condition of the road to White Cliffs. It had rained recently and the road would be a bit iffy for the Motley so we decided to visit there another time Just past Wilcannia we passed Talyawalka Creek which we had photographed last time we came through because the flood was lapping the sides of the road. This time there was no water to be seen.
When we reached Broken HIll we booked into the same caravan park we had used last time. We were pleasantly surprised to meet up with friends we had met first at the Forbes rally when they were just dreaming of motorhoming. They have since bought an old Swagman, done it up, had some dramas with rotting bodywork which required another hand deep in the pocket. He had taken on extra work to refill the coffers and had fallen off a ladder and injured himself very badly. Happily all that is behind them now and they are full time on the road and very happy with it. It was good to meet up with them as see that they are dedicated travellers.
There were other motorhomers in the park so we had pleasant happy hours.
We decided to take in the sights of Broken Hill while we waited for the mail Since the weather was a bit cool and overcast, we did a tour of some of the more famous galleries.
Pro Hart's place left us a bit unimpressed, mostly because they have jammed too much into too little space, but also because his work doesn't really click with either of us.
Jack Absalom's gallery was much more impressive. His work is most evocative of the landscape hereabouts. We bought a couple of smallish prints to decorate the Motley.
Roxanne Minchin has a very dramatic style which, while not being realistic, certainly captures the dominant feature of this landscape which is the sky.
We needed lunch and couldn't find anywhere appropriate to eat until we came to Subway. Jean remarked that they were supposed to be into healthy food so we gave them a try. The food was really good and I noticed that they had learned that one of MacDonald's keys to success is good fast service in a scrupulously clean environment. We certainly will not avoid them in the future.
On the way back to the caravan park, we passed the butcher who had provided the most delicious shop cooked ham last time we were here. I went in and told them that I had travelled 10,000 km to buy some ham only to be told that the oven was broken.
We had been told by some travellers we had met that the cafe at Silverton served wonderful food. We had not seen all of Silverton last time we came so we took advantage of a nice sunny day to revisit. The food was indeed very good and the rest of the town we had missed last time was fascinating. There are a couple of resident artists who had interesting galleries but neither came near Jack Absalom's achievements. The "church" turned out to be the Masonic lodge!.
Being in the Little Motley, we explored a bit and found the Mundi Mundi Lookout which provides a fabulous view over a vast valley to the north.
Chatting to some people over lunch, we were advised not to miss Whites Mining Museum. This is a strange place which has a simulated mine gallery complete with tools and machines and which is decorated with models of various parts of a mine and with pictures entirely made from ground up mineral ores of various colours all obtained locally. The lady who did the presentation was very informative but they was a hint of unhappiness about the treatment of miners in what she said. I spoke to her afterwards and she told me that her husband, the artist and developer of the museum had been a miner all his life from the age of 15 until, at the age of 48, he was told one day not to come to work any more because they were introducing new machinery and didn't want to train anyone of his age in its operation. They had two daughters in university at the time and not only had his wage disappeared but also the company's subsidy for their studies. They had planned to open the museum when he retired but retirement came unexpectedly so they had to rush to finish it and open it to the public. It's hardly surprising that her presentation has an edge to it.
Someone else had said we shouldn't miss "the biggest oil-on-canvas painting in the world" at the Silver Mint. This is a jewelry and trinket gallery with some mining stuff and some paintings by local artists. One enters the display of "the picture" through a cave decorated with mock aboriginal rock paintings and one emerges from the semi-darkness onto covered boardwalk and platform which looks out into a large space filled with light from the near complete circle panorama of the painting. This is a stylised view of various features of the local landscape including, strangely, the Flinders Ranges which are hundreds of kilometres from here. In front of the painting, the foreground is real sand, rocks, plants and lots of not so obvious details like lizards, birds nests and a emu skull. The style of the painting is realistic though the perspective is a bit odd. The effect is dramatic and one certainly gets a real feeling of the local landscape. Worth a visit but maybe the biggest but not the best painting in the world.
We had rested up in Broken Hill to wait for the mail which Al had sent from Brisbane and it duly arrived in three days. The most important inclusion was spare feet for iBook which Al had organised from Next Byte under warranty.
The weather here has been, for the most part, very pleasant, but the nights have been very, very chilly and we have been happy to use the heater overnight to keep us warm and comfortable. We decided to stay on a few more days hoping that the overnight temperature improves.
I bought some hardware and made a new mounting for my flagpole so that I will be encouraged to fly the Homeless Network flag a lot more.
The weather turned out bright and clear so we went to visit the miners memorial on top of the old mine workings. The memorial is quite impressive being built right on the top of the hill which is the mine. It has the names and details of every miner who died in the area either in accident, mine failure, or mining related disease . There were very few years in the 127 since mining started here when no-one died. Sadly many of the fatalities were from falls or machinery crushes, and many were from heart attack while working in the mine or from lung disease.
There is a much touted restaurant in the visitor centre attached to the memorial. The visitors centre itself can only be described as "tacky" even though the building is quite impressive and the "restaurant" is just a cafe like a thousand others While we were admiring the view from the car park, we met a solo lady caravanner who is staying in the same caravan park as us and we struck up a lively conversation which we carried on at happy hour.
I worked on the last of the tidying up of the chapter affairs in preparation for handing over to the new Secretary next week.
I am having great difficulty in dealing with my email because the mobile phone driver on the iBook seems to be broken and no-one in town seems to have a spare fax line I can borrow. I had asked Al to down-load all my email at Ferny Hills, delete any spam, and forward the real messages to my new account on Jeremy's server. He had to trawl through over 900 emails and recovered just 10 real ones. My efforts to get my mail fro the new account are still to be successful.
We decided to stay on a few more days to continue our pleasant happy hours and to prepare for the journey to Paskeville.