Aussie Outback Roadtrip

Immediately following our Fiji trip we headed up the blue mountains to begin our trip out bush-- and by immediately I mean as soon as we got out of the airport, Andrew picked us up and we were on our way. We stayed the night at Andrew's parents house and the rose early the next morning to take on the biggest leg of our trip. We rode about 1,100km (on looooong, straight roads) and saw heaps (as well as heaps of nothin)! It was crazy to see the scenery change gradually as we went along. There were so many wild animals! Kangaroos hopped in front of our car (the trusty PRADO!) kind of like deer in the us, there were tons of sheep and goats, some cows and horses along with emus and really pretty birds. There were train tracks everywhere even though we were in the middle of nowhere. This trip made me really miss my dad because he would have LOVED it!

Sorry Marion!! :)

long. flat. straight.

cows (obviously)

If you look closely, you can see two emus

 Anyways, Friday evening's stop was Broken Hill. We set up our tent and the rest of camp. It actually ended up raining that evening and night (and every other night we were out there... go figure, tons of rain in the desert) but it stopped long enough for us to catch the sunset over the Mundi Mundi Plains.

The tent!!

Mundi Mundi Plains

Outback sunset

Saturday, we did much less driving and much more sight-seeing. After we packed up camp, we went to the Historic Day Dream Mine in Silverton. Sterling and I went on an underground tour of the mine which was pretty neat. Then, we had the BEST SCONES EVER when we finished-- fresh baked in a brick oven.

After that, we moved on to the Living Desert where there were these really cool looking rock sculpture things. Is crazy how they put these attractions in what seems to be in the middle of nowhere. 

Next, we went to the Silver City Art Centre where we saw Ando's Big Picture, the world's largest acrylic paining by a single artist that measures 100meters x 12meters. Words can't describe how incredible it was! The painting was positioned around the walls of a circular room and the floor had been landscaped with dirt and plants to match the painting. The painting includes an Outback sunrise, the Menindee Lakes, the Broken Hill Sculptures, and many other Outback landmarks and animals. It was beautiful. 


We then went on top of the Line of Lode, which is basically a GIANT pile of waste mining(?) materials I believe. From the top, we could see the entire town of Broken Hill.

Line of Lode in the background w/ a building on top

We then went to the Menindee Lakes which were so full! It was shocking to see such a large lake (with waves and all) in the middle of the desert. (Hmm... while I was just looking for that link up there, there was an article from march that said the Minindee lakes had it's wettest start to a year in over 100 years...interesting!) 

Trees in the water

Train track pic for dad!

After all of the sight seeing, we headed to our destination for the evening, Ivanhoe. The road to Ivanhoe was all dirt. In the Outback, the dirt roads get REALLY slick, and guess what!!, it rained the few nights before and it rained while we were on the road, so the road was insane! It's hard to describe but it all turned to mush and we may or may not have spun out of control and ended up off the side of the road. It was a funny experience only because there is literally nothing around to run into. 

Muddy muddy mess

When we finally got to Ivanhoe, we found the the caravan park that we were going to camp at no longer existed, so we set up camp in a park by the road by the police station that luckily had a pavilion so we could cook in a dry place and bathrooms!! ... another one funny experience.

The next morning, we woke up with only one goal. Find and get to a place in time to watch the footy finals and we did just that! We drove on more slippery dirt roads!! We came up to a car (who would go on those roads in a little car?!?!) that had slid off the road into a ditch. We stopped like nice people would, but as we were stopping I was so scared we were just going to slide right into their car. It was seriously that slippery and there was no way that we would ever get enough traction to pull them out... so we just got their information and then carried on... they'll be 'right. We finally made it to a pretty nice campground in West Wialong that evening, took much needed showers, cooked up some meat, and watched the footy! I should also note that it rained again that night haha at least it kept the giant flies away!!


On Monday, we headed home... all paved roads from West Wialong. It wasn't too long of a drive, we made it home by 3ish and I slept a lot of the way. Props to Andrew for getting us home in one piece.


All in all it was a good experience... quite different from staying at a resort in Fiji though!