Lithgow and Broken Hill

Location: Melbourne
Weather: Raining, even at night!

Next stop we decided would be Broken Hill - the outback town - so after consulting our maps and timetables we discovered we'd missed the train to Broken Hill and instead went 10km's up the road to Lithgow. WOW! what a place. If you're ever in Australia and get homesick and want to pretend you're in Raynes Park then go to Lithgow! the Grand Central Hotel we stayed in was ok though and we met a friendly railwayman who'd been all around Australia and gave us some handy travel tips.

The next day was a real fun day...NOT! we decided to go to Broken Hill no matter what. So we caught the train to Dubbo - this only took 4 hours, which wasn't bad. BUT then since there is only one CountryLink train to Broken Hill per week (YES, PER WEEK) we had to get the bus there - 9 hours of luxury travel if ever it existed! Cramped, ropey, small seats and a road surface that was clearly modeled on the most uneven parts of the moon. I did see a dead cat in the lorry carpark half way though! he was as flat as a pancake, it was incredible! The "in-bus" films Kangaroo Jack and Daddy Daycare weren't bad either. Ben was more lucky than me he saw some kangaroos and emus on the way.

After rolling into Broken Hill around 10:45pm CST (local time - BH is on Adelaide time even though it's in NSW where the time was really 11:15pm) we checked into the BH YHA. I liked this place it had a good kitchen and nice rooms and friendly staff and nobody else in the world was about.

So here we were - Broken Hill - the most famous mining town in the world - one of the most remote places in Australia - Outback - over 1000km's from Sydney! so what did we do - our Laundry of course! after that we hired a bike each and visited the Royal Flying Doctors base. They had the actual aeroplane from the TV series and had a tour of the premises, very interesting.

Next day we got up early and went on the tour of Delprat's Mine. This is one of the best tours I've ever been on, you got to go 400m's down the lift-shaft in the miners cage and were shown and told all about how the zinc, lead and silver mine used to be by our excellent and most entertaining guide ex-miner Ron. He even gave us some zinc,lead and silver crystals because we came from London!

By JamesReed on 22.05.04 @ 02:57 PM GMT