It was a clear cold night in Swan Hill where we stayed at the Murray Downs Resort on our second last night of this trip. The lack of cloud cover led to very low overnight temperature and the morning temperature was around 2C. However the day brightened up to a pleasant day with a temperature…
We had a cold night at Mungo with the temperature dropping to around 1C early in the morning. Today was a travel day as we began our journey home. Our first stage was to drive back to Mildura down Arumpo Road from Mungo. It actually didn’t seem as rough going back on the other side…
The shortest way to get to Mungo National Park from Mildura is along Arumpo Road. The total distance is just over 100 kilometres with the first 40 being bitumen and the remaining sixty kilometres are unmade. The road conditions vary from smooth to roughly corrugated so our speed varied from 70 kmh down to 30…
The Murrray River is the life blood of Mildura. It provides water for irrigation that drives the local economy, tourism and recreation. Without it, this rural city would not exist. We had a rest day from driving today and spent the time pottering around some of the city’s sights and attractions. The Murray River rises…
Our stay in Menindee was much better than we expected. I didn’t have many high hopes for The Burke and Wills Motel where we stayed but it was actually a nice place. Although basic, The rooms were very clean and well equipped. It was a pleasant place stay, unlike the decrepit country motel I was…
It was a cold morning in Broken Hill with the temperature being around 3C. As we left, we stopped at the Junction mine which sits toward the southern end of the Line of Load in Broken Hill. It’s an abandoned mine that worked on rich silver ores with a shaft over 500 metres deep. The mine…
Having seen many of the sights in the city of Broken Hill on our first day here, we set our second day aside to visit a couple of interesting remote locations. We began by driving to the (almost) ghost town of Silverton. Driving there is something of an outback experience. The road is made but…
Broken Hill is in New South Wales but it is so remote that it still retains the 30 minute time difference of South Australia. The city is based around a hill that was almost pure silver, lead and zinc. It is a mining town right on the edge of the desert. It’s not a big town…
In a final look around Burra before leaving, we found a few sights that we hadn’t yet seen such as the old railway station. The last trains from here ran in the 1990s. Railway lines were once the life blood of rural Australia but have now been replaced by modern road transport. Trucks now transport…
Over the last couple of days, we have explored most of the flat agricultural area of the Yorke Peninsula. Today, we moved through some more undulating country which is more focused on grazing rather than grain cropping. In a previous post I mentioned that most of the land on the peninsula is used for growing…
I have found two differences between this area of the Yorke Peninsula (and generally through South Australia) with Victoria. In Victoria, timber was commonly available to early settlers as an inexpensive and expeditious method of construction. Many early buildings have either rotted away or fallen down. In South Australia, early settlers used stone for constructing…
Yesterday,, we spent our day travelling south of Edithburgh to the very southerly end of the York Peninsula. Just after leaving Edithburgh,we came across the Wattle Park Wind Farm. It has been operating since April 2005. When it was officially opened in June of that year it was Australia’s largest wind farm at 91 megawatts.. Its…