22/4/18 To the hill & beyond

  Leaving Cobar early , well earlier than most days , we headed to Wilcannia then onwards to Broken Hill . Long straight stretch's of road going to the horizon with different vegetation and soil colours along the way - extremely dry out here , drought is hitting hard .

  The bonnet of the car shows the result of a shower of rain at Nyngan - it rains dirt when the wind has been blowing , the airborne dust gets deposited with the rain - the result , an instantly filthy car & van !! Here's the view through the van window in the sun .

  As we were driving , a cloud bank appeared and as we drove it passed through . The trailing edge looked like a wall of cloud - you can see it in the next 2 photos .

 It shows up a lot more in black & white .

 Had a bright idea - lets take a panoramic photo as we drive - the road was a little bumpy hahaha .

      We came to a section of road that was the worst for road kill we have seen for a long time - maybe ever !! There were kangaroo carcasses in every state of decay you might imagine , and the telltale marks on the road from where they were hit , emu's also featured in this as well . Speaking of animals , we have seen hundreds of goats , lots of emus and kangaroos , some sheep and very few cattle .
 Arriving at Wilcannia , we drove down the side road to the BP station - we discovered when we got back to the highway that we had saved 12cents per litre compared to the fuel station on the highway!! Wilcannia also surprised with the buildings - quite impressive - here's a few of them .

 When you drive in the outback , you get excited by little things , like mountains in the distance - the roads are long and the landscape pretty flat .

  Other things that get your attention are wide loads , some wider than others , today we had 2 wide loads . When I say wide loads I mean 8m wide loads - it's a case of pulling over and stopping till they go past - this was one of 2 - it's the body of a tip truck minus the wheels and tray - bloody huge !!!

 A couple of the many emus .

 Further up the road we neared Broken Hill where we will stay for for the next week or so .

 A new day , time to check out town , first stop was the Line of Lode Miners Memorial up where the BHP mine once stood . There are plans to have lots of attractions there , but it's a work in progress , at present there's a cafe , the memorial and some old mining equipment on display . The memorial we found to be a bit disturbing - the miners that died here have there names put onto glass tiles in the memorial - they also detail how they died - some exited the lift early , others fell down shafts , others caught in machinery or buried in rockslides - very gruesome .
This is the memorial .

 This is the view over Broken Hill .

These are old mine buildings no longer in use .

  The architecture in Broken Hill is quite amazing also , we did part of a heritage walk , here are some of the buildings .

This is the inside of one hotel - art deco inspiration .

 Back to the van for lunch before heading out to the Living Desert Sculptures . The sculptures are about 15 klms out of town up on top of a hill with views all round . There are walks to do and some captive ( fenced in ) kangaroos , a picnic area and around the other side of the hill is a campground . We parked at the picnic ground and started walking up the hill to the sculpture park and had made it over half way when we had a thought - the gates close at 6:30pm , so you have to be out before then - if we are going to watch sunset at 5:40pm , that leaves 50 minutes to make our way back down in the dark and get out - with that realisation , I walked back to the ute and drove up to the sculptures , Lyn continued walking up the hill .
 So here a they are .

 There are certainly not many creature comforts up here , so we walked around looking then went back to the ute to wait for sundown - cars started rolling in as the sun was getting lower - there would have been 60 people up here ! Unfortunately a cloud bank started coming towards us and blocked out most of the sun , this was the result .

 And so ended our culture for the evening , and it was back to town . Here's a map link :- https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JrNUm25edAc6JUJAwoOZCPcpst6VMZqM&usp=sharing