Another Milestone

KIMBA yahoo, halfway across this great country.

IRON KNOB an iron ore mine just past Port Augusta.

EYRE HIGHWAY watch out, a bend in the road.

WUDINNA this statue is made out of local granite and recognises the sheep and wheat farmers in the area.

STREAKY BAY, Eyre Peninsula where we are parked up tonight, the park on the foreshore is full with Easter campers and lot's of fishermen in residence. A pretty spot but don't think we could handle the flies, certainly not as many as Silverton, but enough to give you 'the wave'.

What the?!

MAGNETIC HILL near Peterborough is a strange phenomenon as you put your car in neutral, turn off the ignition and the next thing you know you are moving up hill, reckon we got up to about 5kms per hour. Last year whilst in the area we missed visiting here so made a point of stopping here in Peterborough so we could check this out.
NEAR PETERBOROUGH in South Australia, as you can see the scenery is arid, wheat growing area and old sandstone homes, they built with this as termites have a great appetite in the area.

NEAR BROKEN HILL in New South Wales, which has the red earth desert. Interestingly the area operates on South Australia time, area code and football playing as they wanted to change to SA as they felt they were just a pin prick on on the NSW map and didn't get funding, but the NSW Government stepped in as they wanted the wealth from the area.

Way out West

BROKEN HILL We have been here for three days, an interesting silver, lead and zinc mining town and for a mining town it appears really clean. The speed limit is 50kms, any more that that and your car would shake to bits as most roads despite being sealed are very bumpy.

There are a lot of art galleries and one hosts "The Big Picture" which is home to an amazing panoramic oil painting of the outback which is 100 metres long and over 12 metres high and took over two years to complete. In the room that it is housed the foreground has 300 tonne of red earth, plants, animals and birds so very life like.

SILVERTON is 25kms out of town from Broken Hill and was a booming mining town between 1881 and 1885, so just a few old buildings and also home to some art galleries. The Silverton Hotel has been featured in many movies, generally with a different name and the black Falcon next to us is the car used in the Mad Max movies with the local area as a back drop.

THE LIVING DESERT RESERVE is just 9kms out of Broken Hill, it has some walks which give you an idea of the area. As you can see we did get to see a kangaroo, he was one of two that we saw as well as a lizard and about a million flies. On our way out to Silverton earlier in the day we spotted some wild donkeys.
MUNDI MUNDI PLAINS with dust just starting to take off from this harsh landscape. Silverton and Broken Hill get a few dust storms each year as you can imagine, luckily we missed the one that Mildura had the other day.
PAUL with the Mundi Mundi Plains in the back ground whilst we were at The Living Desert, check out the flies, if you look closely you can see them buzzing just out from Paul's head, gross! Don't know how people can live in some of these areas.
STURT PEAS At long last we saw some of these flowers whilst at The Living Desert, they are the symbol of most desert areas so have seen them on lot's of souvenirs.
SCULPTURE SYMPOSIUM Next to The Living Desert there is a collection of sandstone carvings up on a hill overlooking the Mundi Mundi Plains and Broken Hill, this one is titled "Horse".

Mildura Skyline

OVERLOOKING VINEYARDS FROM OUR CARAVAN SITE The sky in the area has been so clear that you are always seeing plane's vapour trails and the sunsets are just beautiful. At night when the stars are out there are that many that they look like they go down and touch the ground.

Out Bush ,West New South Wales

THE PERRY SAND HILLS near Wentworth, they date back to an Ice Age approximately 40,000 years ago. The land surrounding here is dry and scrubby and then you have all these red ochre sand hills, the colours reminiscent of driving up through the centre.

THE WALLS OF CHINA Mungo National Park that is part of the Willandra Lakes Region World Heritage Area. The walls are the old foreshore of Lake Mungo one of the lakes in the area that dried out 17,000-18,000 years ago - remember it well!
LAKE MUNGO remnants of the lake floor. Once you turn off the highway there is a 110km drive into the park with 88kms of that being dirt road. We saw a few emus and when out walking around the Walls of China there must of been a million flies buzzing around, I wore my very fashionable fly net, no good worrying about how you look when you don't know anyone else there.

MURRAY AND DARLING RIVERS INTERSECTION.

Back to the Murray River

MURRAY RIVER by Mildura. Today we drove through to this area, last year we visited Echuca further east on the Murray, the river looks the same at this stage but it may be a couple of months before the water from the Queensland floods filters through. STURT HIGHWAY From Swan Hill through to here there were quite a few wineries, citrus farms and olive trees. It is strange in that at times you have arid bush like this and then orchards as below.

ORANGE GROVES along the highway. The ground is just so dry and the area has more days of sunshine than the Gold Coast, on average 300 days. The mornings are crisp and days at the moment around 30 degrees.

Moooving On

HOW NOW Brown Cow Shepparton is a town that services the local rural areas. Driving here yesterday we were astonished at the number of gum trees that were damaged and we learnt that this was caused by a storm a couple of weeks ago with winds up to 154 kms an hour that lasted just ten minutes. The caravan park that we are staying in lost 60 trees and several fences were damaged, fortunately no caravans or cabins were damaged.
GO AUSTRALIA!

JUST GRAZING

TWO COWS