Arrived at Broken Hill

 We arrived at Broken Hill around lunch time today and came straight to the caravan park. We were given a caravan site that was about ten foot long so we immediately had to go back to the office and request a slightly larger one (considering our van is 24 ft long, haha). They found us another site and we settled in very quickly. We did a couple of small loads of washing in our van washing machine then had showers and headed up the road to the shops.

I am so surprised by how huge Broken hill is and how populated it is. There were people absolutely everywhere. I am also shocked by how the mines just run paralell with the main street, one block back from it. Can you imagine working in the times and being that close to town? Broken hill seems like a wonderful place. The locals have been extremely friendly and we stopped counting after five different people/groups at the supermarket commented on how beautiful Zac is and how bright his lovely smile is. Everyone in every shop was extremely friendly (especially the staff) and they had plenty of time for a chat. Its a nice change from the main towns, not being rushed out by busy customer service staff.

The caravan park is nice, a little more expensive than other places though at $32 per night for a powered site. It has a nice little park for kids a communal camp kitchen and standard amenities. Its also about a five minute walk from the shopping centre and the centre of town.

Were having some problems witht he caravan tonight. The electricity is stuffing up and it has left us without a heater which is absolutely freezing. Weve checked out pretty much every possible thing we can check so we will most likely have to attempt to find an electrician in Broken Hill tomorrow. Hopefully that wont be too hard or costly.

Brent is considering looking for some work here, especially with the mines so close to town. Well, in town.

This is photo 1 of 3 that I took on the "highway". Brent and I wanted to show you how .... well how much of "nothing" there is out there (although its still so beautiful). This photo is standing on the rest stop paralell to the highway looking to the left.

This photo is facing straight out forward in the same spot as the last photo

And this photo is to the right, so as you can see there was nothing in any direction for as far as you can see.

A close up of the sign behind the caravan on the other side of the highway.

Driving through the main street of Broken Hill.

See the "hill" at the end of the street, that is the mine.

And a somewhat crappy photo of another beautiful sunrise this morning (this was taken through the car window, while driving after the best part of the sunrise was already over).

Please cross your fingers for us that our electrical problems are sorted out tomorrow. Its sooooooo cold in here without the heater and its frustrating paying for electricty and not having it.

Cobar and the Cobar heritage house and open cut mine

I feel as though I need to share the spectacular sunrise we seen this morning while on the road between Dubbo and Cobar. We were so blown away by it that we just had to stop and take photos.

We left Dubbo at 6am as we didn't want to risk being stuck inside because of rain. We decided that we would stop for the night at Cobar because all of the brouchers on Cobar made it sound extremely interesting. We stopped at Nyngan - about halfway between Dubbo and Cobar around breakfast time and plugged out generator in (for the first time). It was absolutely freezing outside so we decided we needed some sort of a hot breakfast as cold cerial was not appealing at all. We made some toasted sandwiches and quickly ate them up. It was fantastic to be able to use the generator for electricity so that we could use our power outlets, with solar we are only able to use lights and television so if we wish to make hot food we have to warm up the gas oven which we then have to wait for it to cool down before we can pack up to leave again. The generator made the stop alot faster!

Thr trip to Cobar was beautiful, the dirt is getting redder the further West we go although it was hard to show the colours properly in my photos. Brent and I thought it was absolutely beautiful! We even seen some wild goats romaing around just outside of Cobar, they were a bit too hard to catch photos of though as there was no where to stop the car near them. The frost was also amazing, it covered entire fields and paddocks and was all over the side of the road early this morning. It looked like snow but it melted quiet quickly once the sun was up completely. Zac and I picked up some leaves with frost on them and pulled all the ice off, it was amazing to see that so much "ice" had formed just over one single cold night.

The seemingly "never bending" straight roads just go on for miles and miles.

The gorgeous white frost that Zaccy and I just had to see up close.

The red dirt and beautiful bushland.



Brent and Zachery outside the heritage centre when we stopped off for some tourist information on the way into town. This was before we went to the caravan park, settled in, had lunch and got Zachery out of his pyjamas haha.

We arrived at Cobar at about 11am and immediately went to the caravan park, we chose a site as the office was closed and had a sign saying to choose your own site and come back to the office at12pm. We set everything up, had a quick lunch then went up to the office. At the office we checked in then we decided to drive back to the Cobar Heritage House which is also the tourist information centre.
The heritage house is absolutely amazing! It is only $9 per adult to enter ($7 for children over 4) and it is filled with years and years worth of Cobars history. It covers the wool industry, copper mining, gold mining (and other types of mining), domestic life and so much more. It is definately a "must see" and it is worth stopping at Cobar to see this attraction alone. The Heritage house is the orginal office building of the open cut mind it is situated in front of and your entry fee to the house also allows you to wander (unguided) through the open cut mine (in some areas).  Ever item/piece of machinery/vehicle/tool/photograph in the entire place is sign posted and has information next to it. There is a simulated "underground mind shaft" you are able to walk into  and spend some time inside and there is just a whole lot more, far too much to list.




The cool "simulated mine shaft" It was a bit scary for me as im claustrophobic (a little) so I stayed near the entry, but Brent and Zachery went straight in.






Zaccy touching some sheeps wool on one of the exhibits.

This pit of water is in the middle of the open cut mine. It is 43 metres deep despite how small it is in width/length etc. It looks like a tiny dam which makes it more shocking that its that deep. Once you hit the 43 metre mark beneath the water there is another 450 metre deep vertical shaft aswell as that. The shaft goes down through where all the underground mining used to occour.


Cobar, for us, was the perfect place to discover the concept of "Seeing things for yourself". When planning this trip and explaining to people about how we are NOT well seasoned travellers and do not want to go anywhere where there may be any sort of danger from any level, we were advised that previously there had been alot of warnings about crime in Cobar. This led us to add it to our list of "places to avoid until we are a bit more experienced with travelling". However while in Dubbo we picked up some tourist brouchures and discovered that Cobar has come along way and is quiet a historical jackpot. I am so grateful for all the advice we received about this trip but at the same time I think its wonderful to come to a place we were very nervous about and find that it has changed and is quiet a beautiful place to visit. Tomorrow morning we are booked in for a bus tour of a copper mine and a gold mine and a tour of the town and its other attractions. The tour goes for three hours and will hopefully be a great experience for us and Zachery. We are also going to spend tomorrow night in Cobar aswell and will move on to Broken Hill on Friday.

The Dubbo Zoo and tomorrows plans for Dubbo

Zac and Brent riding Rhino statues


We had a wonderful morning at the Dubbo zoo. Zachery and I walked most of the zoo and Brent kept bringing the car up to meet us at the next exhibit. It was a lovely, sunny, cool morning so it was perfect for walking around the dry dusty tracks. Zachery loved all of the animals and it was so brilliant to see him staring at them, searching for them and spotting them. Previous times when we have been to zoos for him he really hasn't understood what he was looking for in the seemingly empty enclosures, this time he was running for the next enclosure in excitment trying to guess what would be in there.

Zachery told us the colours of most of the animals and also identified a maority of them (excluding the really exotic variities of deer/buffalo etc).

Family photo infront of the Zebra's

Zachery got to feed the giraffes lots of carrotts, he loved it but he was crying while he was waiting in line and other people were fedding the giraffes because he thought "their bellys will be too full when its my turn" haha.

Our sweet little cherub, getting very sleepy by this point.

Daddy and Zaccy both cuddled the wallaby.

Zachery was blown away by the rhinos. He said "look theres a daddy rhino and he has his baby Zaccy rhino"

The Dubbo zoo was a great experience. It VERY spread out and makes you feel as though you are almost in the wild/the bush. It is wonderful to walk and you can tak eyour own food in. We packed a big picnic lunch and at it at the zoo. There is an enormous variety of animals to see and alot of interactive extras you can do - including feeding the giraffes - Its a beautiful family day out.

Zachery was very tired by 1pm so we decided to have a quick look in the gift shop and then head off. Zachery chose a Cheetah toy as he loves cats and he said it was like his grandmas cat, Jasper. Once we left the zoo we went into the Dubbo tourist information centre and picked up alot of information on the surrounding areas. We also picked up information on two places a friend of mine mentioned to me, the Japanese gardens in Dubbo city and the Wellington caves. We have decided we will visit both of these places tomorrow.

Tonight is our last night in the Big 4 caravan park as we are going to try to find a "Free Camp" in our Camps book to stay at tomorrow night so that we can stretch our money a little further for the trip. Hopefulyl we can find somewhere near by. We might go have a look around this afternoon and choose one for tomorrow.