We are now well and truly on the way home. We said goodbye to Yvonne and Bob in Yunta as they travelled off ahead of us on their way home and some family commitments. We chose to stay a little while in Broken Hill because, even though we had been there numerous times, there were still things of interest we had not seen. This time it was the 'Big Picture' and Bell's Milkbar at the top of our priority list. We would like to recommend the Big Picture to anyone visiting Broken Hill as something not to be missed. It is the worlds largest painting on canvas and is just spectacular. (for obvious reasons no photos allowed)
After leaving Broken Hill our next point of interest was Mutawintji National Park. Being our first visit we were keen to undertake some of the walks. Unfortunately access was restricted to several areas within the park because of flood damage,but that still left plenty to explore. In the several days we were there we managed to do the Mutawintji Gorge Walk (6 Km) and the Rockholes Loop Walk (7.5 Km) and the Homestead Creek Gorge Walk (7.5 Km)
Click on any image to enlarge
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| Mutawintji Gorge |
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| Mutawintji Gorge |
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| Rockholes Loop Walk |
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| Rockholes Loop walk |
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| Homestead Creek Gorge |
The scenery in Mutawintji is really quite attractive and there were lots of wildlife, especially birds. Of particular delight were the flocks of Budgeriegars but the only one we could get a decent photo of were the Emus that wandered around the camping area. Unfortunately not all the wildlife is desirable, we saw several hundred Feral Goats which are a real problem. We were not surprised to learn that last year they removed over 9100 goats from the park.
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| lots of Emus around the camping area |
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| Just one of the many goats we saw |
On the Rockholes Loop walk we also saw plenty of Aboriginal Art, both paintings and etchings (Petroglyphs)
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| Paintings |
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| Etchings |
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| Etchings |
After an enjoyable visit to the National Park we continued along the unsealed back road to White Cliffs. In all during this leg we covered well over 200 Km of unsealed road with most of the last 150 Km being the roughest we had ever towed the van on. It was just a brief visit to White Cliffs, we had intended to stay longer but the only place we could camp would have had us stepping out of the van onto a very thick carpet of prickly burrs. We had already had a couple of bad experiences with burrs on this trip, so we chose to move on.
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| Broken Hill to White Cliffs 'road' |
It was an easy run from White Cliffs to Wilcannia where re-joined the highway to head east. Our journey then had us travelling through Cobar, Nyngan to Narromine for an overnight stop and then on through Dubbo to Orange to visit family. We would have stayed longer in Orange except when we awoke the next morning in the caravan park we were greeted by a temperature of minus one degree and quite a bit of frost. Far too cold for my liking, so it did not take long to decide to head for home on the coast and some warmer temperatures (we hope)
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| A frosty morning in Orange |
That's it from me for now. I hope you have enjoyed some of my rambling descriptions of our travels,
