Day 7 Friday 23rd June

While I had a quick look around the Wentworth Cemetery this morning, Rob looked over Lock 10 which just happened to be next to the cemetery.  We then had an easy drive to Broken Hill arriving here for a late lunch. We visited the tourist information centre and then went on the Broken Hill silver trail heritage drive. It was quite an extensive drive and will take at least 2 hours to do it all so we completed about half of it and will do the rest tomorrow. It took us to the very historical areas and we saw many old beautiful buildings but we were very impressed with the older silver and zinc mines close to the main town. Here there are numerous explanations of mining in the past and the development of Broken Hill. The memorial to the 800 miners who have died on the job since 1885 was spectacular. It listed all their names and how they died. Of course in the early days of the mines, the deaths per year were many and some of the miners were very young. We found one who was only 12. The last 40 years the deaths were few and far between.  We are staying at a lovely park and it is next to the cemetery….so I picked up a pamphlet about a self-guided cemetery walk that I hope to do before we leave. We’ve booked in for 3 nights and have quite a bit planned. We decided to “eat out” tonight and went to the Palace Hotel an old and iconic hotel in Broken Hill, mainly because it featured in the movie “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert”. It has a huge glittery shoe in the foyer, murals on most walls and really promotes itself on this. Our meals were enjoyable and after quick look around the Pub we returned to the van.












Comments

  1. JulesJune 24, 2017 at 2:44 PM

    Striking a rather famous Cher pose there Rob! If only you could turn back time...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 14 Friday 30th June

Image
We were happy to wake to blue skies this morning and had packed up and left by 8.30am. We made good time and crossed the border into Queensland and arrived in the outback town of Cunnamulla well before lunch. We had intended to continue on to Charleville but after visiting the Information Centre decided to stay the night and explore the town. We saw our first beautiful “Queenslander” home as we drove into the town. Cunnamulla is notable for the “Cunnamulla Fella” who was apparently made famous in a song by Slim Dusty. There was a very large bronze statue of the “Fella” in the main civic area. We took a tour of “The Artesian Time Tunnel” which was a very interesting and told of the history of the Great Artesian basin” from when it was first formed millions of years ago to how it is used today and how there is now a very strong environmental focus on using the water responsibly.   We went for a drive around the town, out to the weir and on the way back stopped at the cemetery to tak...
Read more

Day 103 Wednesday 27th September

Image
We had another reasonably easy drive from Goulburn to Albury Wodonga situated on the Murray River, arriving around lunchtime. (Wodonga is on the Victorian side of the river and Albury on the NSW side.)   After setting up, we headed into the city centre of Albury to visit the Library Museum. In this building we found a wonderful exhibition called “Crossing Place” which told of the history of the area, famous people who came from the area and other general information. There was an excellent display dedicated to Bonegilla Migrant Centre which operated from the 1940s to 1970s. From here we drove out to the Lake Hume, a huge reservoir formed by the building of a dam wall from 1919 to  1927. This wall is built across the Murray River. 27. This wall is built across the Murray River.
Read more

Day 102 Tuesday 26th September

Image
Goulburn has a very interesting history. It was the first regional town in Australia to have the steam train service. The train came from Sydney in 1869 and there are many buildings and reminders of this around the town. The actual town was established in 1833 as free settlers were given land grants here. It was a large agricultural centre for the region. We did a bit of a historical railway walk and even Rob may have enjoyed bits of it! After a stop for coffee we drove to the War Memorial Tower lookout. We had good views from the town here but were more impressed by the tower which was a brilliant memorial to WW1. After lunch Rob dropped me back in town to do a couple more historical walks while he did some jobs back at the van. With Goulburn being such an old town there were many magnificent buildings and some interesting old homes. There was even a very old letter-box still in use today. The letter box had slots for letters quite high and these were for people who wanted to post le...
Read more