Menindee to Broken Hill - 15 July 2014

It rained last night, or should I say spat, for a short time and did the same this morning. This morning it was on and off all morning. Another cool, miserable day but as we are travelling, that’s okay. We are heading north now.

We saw a Lookout on the road to Broken Hill which looks out over Menindee Lake so we pulled in to have a look. We were a bit closer to the water and you can see the pipeline which takes the water to Broken Hill. The town water supply comes out of the lake. We also followed for a short way the rail line which carries the Indian Pacific train. We heard it go through this morning while we were packing up.

The emus are so stupid. You drive along and you come across a large group of them (they are everywhere out west). The group might be split on each side of the road. One of the group on the left hand side of the road will take off left and you know the emus on the right hand side of the road are going to follow – right across the road. No wonder you see so many of them as road kill. Stupid things they are.

 Menindee is only 110 kms from Broken Hill and we had got away early so we were in Broken Hill by about 9 to 9.30. Broken Hill is on South Australia time so we had to wind our watches back.  We went straight to the Information Centre and picked up some brochures before going for a walk through town. It was a bit early to check in to the caravan park.

We stopped at Charlotte’s Cafe for morning tea and I had a scone. What a huge scone!

Luckily we continued walking so I could walk some of it off. And I didn't have any lunch.

There is a heritage walk around town and there are signs along the street for the old buildings identifying them and their history. There were also signs around town too for local people who had made a significant contribution with their deeds.

 

We did see some Vegemite and Cheese Sausages for sale. Ah, no thanks. I do like Vegemite but on toast.

 

We had rung yesterday to book into the Broken Hill Tourist Park for 5 nights. We thought we could always extend the booking if we needed to. It was hard to work out where to stay. There are only 2 caravan parks in town and both of them had mixed reviews. There aren’t any free camps around the town. People we had spoken to said there was a problem with stealing in both caravan parks so we ended up booking a site with an ensuite and that way we could put our chairs and things inside the ensuite when we go out. There is also rain forecast.

 

The prices vary at the Caravan Park, depending on the type of site you have. There is a price for bitumen and wood chip, a higher price for grass and a higher price still for a drive through site. We are on a wood chip site and it seems to be quite good.

 

After checking in and setting up, we did some grocery shopping. We hadn’t been near a big shopping centre since we left home. The meat we bought at Willoughby's in Bourke has been beautiful. Unfortunately there was no butcher at the shopping centre where we did our grocery shopping. We bought a couple of meals from Coles and will look in town for a butcher there so we can get local meat.