GTD in Broken Hill

One of the most amazing and frustrating things about exploring and travelling is that you can never see everything. We experienced this phenomenon frequently on our two-month “mini lap”, and started keeping a list of “next time” places, along with prioritising our time in accordance with the likelihood that we would visit that place again. So for example, while we would have liked to see more of Adelaide last time, we can easily fly there, so didn’t spend much time around the city and surrounds.

It’s a little funny that, 10 days into a year-long trip, we already have a running “next time” list. Broken Hill and surrounds are near the top.

Broken Hill is a town right out of a movie set. The streets are wide with colourful flowers and plants adorning the median, the buildings are Victorian-era with intricate scrollwork balcony railings, and the people we encountered are friendly and happy to have a chat. It’s also got a pretty interesting history. Have you heard of the international mining giant BHP Billiton? BHP stands for Broken Hill Proprietary, Australia’s largest company and was started in Broken Hill by one Charles Rasp, a boundary rider who was checking fences in 1883. He thought he had found tin – but actually he had stumbled upon the world’s largest deposits of lead, zinc, and silver. The Broken Hill site still provides something like 10% of the world’s lead.

We also found this bit of history amusing (from the Lonely Planet guidebook to Australia):

When the NSW government refused to give Broken Hill the services it needed, saying the town was just a pinprick on the map, the council replied that Sydney was also a pinprick from where it was, and Broken Hill would henceforth be part of South Australia (SA). Since the town was responsible for much of NSW’s wealth, Broken Hill was told it was to remain part of NSW. In protest, the town adopted SA time, phone area code, and football, playing Australian Rules from then on. Tourists beware: time in Broken Hill is Central Standard Time (CST), 30 minutes later than the surrounding area on Eastern Standard Time (EST); you’re in the 08 phone code region, and don’t talk about rugby in the pub.

We stayed two nights in Broken Hill, which wasn’t nearly enough time to explore the town to our liking. We arrived late, just in time for a shower and excellent pub dinner in our Priscilla Suite in the Palace Hotel (filming location of Priscilla Queen of the Desert!), and spent the entire next day running errands and getting things done (GTD):

• Our first load of laundry – we could have gone longer, but there wouldn’t be another laundrette for at least another week;
• Nick switched his phone carrier to telco giant Telstra, from budget PAYG provider ALDI Mobile, for better consistency of service in the Outback;
• As previously mentioned, the Jeep had been packed up with maximum last-minute panic, and was in a state of chaos. We picked up some stackable clear plastic bins to help with sorely-needed organisation;
• Refilled the petrol tanks and our LPG gas bottle;
• Shopped around for a few various spare parts we wanted to carry with us;
• Took the Jeep for a (mandatory) inspection so that we’re able to renew our registration when it comes due (we’ll be well out of NSW by then so luckily these inspection reports are good for up to 6 months);
• And of course the usual grocery shopping – except for fruits and vegetables, since there’s an interstate restriction on transporting fruits and some veggies between NSW and SA.

With all of that productivity, we did not have any time for sightseeing in and around the town itself – a real shame since there’s so much history, great museums, a nearby memorial to the 900+ miners who have died since Broken Hill became a mining town, a sculpture garden in the desert, the “School of the Air” (formerly radio broadcast, now satellite broadcast, education for children in remote areas of Australia), and many other sights and experiences we would have liked to see. So – the “next time” list it is for Broken Hill!

(But we did get the chance to have several coffees at a cafe called the Silly Goat – highly, highly recommend this place!)

We stayed our second night in Broken Hill at the nearby town racecourse, which is open for camping for a small fee when there aren’t races on. Notably, this site was the first night we didn’t have a bunch of condensation collect on the ceiling of the tent, and woke up toasty and dry, a rather welcome change. Condensation is a problem in cold weather camping, due to the difference in temperature between the warm interior of the tent and the cold exterior air temps, and there’s not really much you can do about it other than increase the ventilation (so your choice is warm and humid, or cold and dry). We don’t really expect condensation to be an issue again on this trip, as our coming weeks of cold camping will be firmly in the Outback, where it’s so dry that any moisture gets whisked away almost immediately (also great for drying laundry, and hair without a hair dryer!).

And, with a dry tent and a fully-stocked Jeep, we were off for a week of camping in remote areas of the Flinders Ranges in South Australia!

Least Valuable Player Award:

• Telstra’s in-store switch process, which took over two hours of time to switch Nick’s mobile from a different provider, and still doesn’t have all the features he signed up for… (the customer service was lovely, it’s the process that seems…flawed)

So, Where Exactly Is This?
Here’s a screenshot of this leg of the journey from WikiCamps! The red is what we’ve already covered, the green is featured in the post you just read. You can also follow us live at this link – our satellite device pings this shared map about every ten minutes.