We headed out of Adelaide and picked up the Barrier Highway. Soon the sat nav said "After 350km turn right", indicating the relatively straightforward nature of navigating Australia's huge open country. We paused at Burra for tea and admired the town's open cast copper mine. After another 100km we turned east and reached Yunta for lunch in a duststorm. The outside temperature climbed above 40 degrees. Rolling into Broken Hill we left SA and reached the Western corner of NSW (although staying on SA time). We had a very delicious meal, the menu involved kangaroo, wallaby, beef, lamb, quail and crocodile ... all delicious at the Open Earth restaurant, built on the "line of lode" (silver seam), overlooking the city.
To make things more exiting, there was a lightning storm! We started Wednesday at the info centre for breakfast, then visited Jack Absalom's gallery, meeting Jack himself, who is one of the famous 'brushmen of the bush'. We fitted in the railway museum before heading NW to historic Silverton, an outback mining town built on the silver and lead deposits, with a population of 3000 in 1885. Today Silverton has less than 40 residents. At the Mundi Mundi lookout we could really take in the vistas of this harsh landscape.
The Umberumberka reservoir nearby is fed by flood run-off, maximising the 9" average annual rainfall here. We saw wedge-tailed eagles, corellas (white parrots), kangeroos and emus. The Silverton Hotel has an interesting interior featuring pictures of movies filmed here.... we stopped for a beer.
We fitted in a garden visit en route back to Broken Hill where we had time to view the World's largest painting on canvas by Peter Anderson. It's 100m long and took two years to complete.
In the evening we went to The Palace Hotel, a typical outback place with a very untypical interior: nearly every wall is painted in local scenes, including all the way up the stairs, the ceilings etc..
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