Hailey Goes To Oz

Last weekend was Easter weekend and Australian employees are lucky enough to have Good Friday and "Easter Monday" as public holidays and NO WORK! On top of that, MY company closed down the Thursday before and the Tuesday after. Woo Hoo! For the holiday, Rob and I (mostly Rob) decided to take a trip to the Outback-and I don't mean the restaurant. We left Sydney late at night and [Rob] drove through the night in our Toyota Corolla rental car. Our destination was Broken Hill, a 3000km round trip drive. We were pretty deep into the outback by the time the sun began to rise, just outside of Dubbo.

Sunrise with bedhead (from the car)

Gorgeous sun rise from the car-continuing on the drive

Sheep crossing!

Emu crossing!

We took a short side trip to Mt. Grenfell to see some Aboriginal Cave Art that has been protected and preserved for 100s of years. Here were some of the paintings.

Horse crossing!

More Emus!

Smooching in The Living Desert-just outside of Broken Hill

Sculpture Symposium-a handful of scuptures made from sandstone by 12 sculptors from all over the world (including Georgia, Mexico, Syria, Bathurst Island and Australia). This is about 12km north of Broken Hill

Sculpture Symposium

Sculpture Symposium-sitting in front of the sculptures on the hill top ready to watch the sunset

Waiting for the sun to set. This was the reason for our 14 hour long roadtrip.

Sunset shot

Action photo

Sunset. The camera couldn't capture how breathtaking it was.

Sunset

That night, Rob wanted to drive about 30 minutes west to cross the border into South Australia so that we could say we'd been to another state. Mission Accomplished.

The next morning we set out to Silverton and caught the sunrise on the way.

Sunrise from the Day Dream Mine near Silverton.

Sunrise in my Outback Hat

Goat crossing!

This is just outside of Silverton at a lookout point called Mundi Mundi Lookout

Mundi Mundi Lookout

Driving to Silverton. Just kidding. This IS Silverton. Practically a ghost town with a population of 40 (although the lady at the gift shop told us that they don't count some of the "residents" because they don't live there year-round). Silverton has a handful of 19th century buildings that are all spaced out in a scary "The Hills Have Eyes" kind of way. It used to be a bustling little town of about 3000 people in 1888 but they all bolted when they found the superior mining town Broken Hill. People actually moved their entire houses out of Silverton to Broken Hill by teams of camels, bullocks and donkeys. That's why there are so few buildings left here.

Lots to do in Silverton!

Rob met his new best friend in front of the Art Gallary in Silverton. This guy followed us everywhere we went and even waited for us on top of the car when we went into the cafe for breakfast. I guess there isn't much for dogs to do in Silverton either.

The cafe we ate breakfast at in Silverton. A couple runs the kitchen and the lady also has a huge doll display in the back of the building (scary) while the man prides himself on his bottle collection-each of which he dug up from the ground in Silverton.

St. Carthage Catholic Church in Silverton

Donkeys in Silverton??

The pride of Silverton: the Silverton Hotel where 40 movies have been shot including Mad Max II (Road Warrior). This is Mel Gibson's car from the movie. Years ago there was a horse named Misty that used to hang out around the pub and would often wander straight in to the bar. She died a few years back (probably from all of the beer) and they buried her in the back patio.

The Silverton Jail

Sleeping in my cell

The donkeys didn't want us to leave!

They had us surrounded

Camel rides in Silverton! We didn't want to ride them, we just wanted pictures of them.

Camel Kiss

That evening we arrived in the opal mining town of White Cliffs.

In White Cliffs, everyone lives underground in what they call "dugouts" to escape the heat. This is someone's dugout

An opal mine

The entire surface of White Cliffs looks like craters on the moon because of all of the opal mining. It's full of holes so watch your step!

White Cliffs

Sunset in White Cliffs

Sitting around the mines, having some wine, watching the sunset

Sunset in White Cliffs

The White Cliffs Underground Hotel

Having a drink underground

Making a call underground

Watching TV underground

Sunrise on the way back to Broken Hill

Sunrise from the road

Pro Hart Art Gallary in Broken Hill-this guy paints scenic pictures on Rolls Royces!

The central hub of the outback: Broken Hill

The Palace Hotel in Broken Hill from a scene in the movie/play Priscilla: Queen of the Desert

It was a nice trip with some gorgeous scenary and some interesting wild life. I'm glad that after almost a year and a half of living in Australia I can now say that I've been to THE OUTBACK, but will I ever go back? Doubt it.

We took a 2 hour train to Newcastle, NSW for the day just to get out of Sydney. Newcastle is mostly known for the great surfing and many surfing competitions are held here (i.e. Surfest). We weren't overly impressed with the town itself so we looked around quickly and then hopped on a bus for an hour to Port Stephens.

Bus to Port Stephens

Port Stephens

Some fishing festival or something going on at Port Stephens

Lunch at Hogs Breath Cafe

After a bit of self-touring and shopping around Port Stephens, we booked a trip to go sand-boarding down the sand dunes. These sand dunes are the largest in the Southern Hemisphere and the trip we booked drives you to the top of them and lets you slide down like you're sledding down a snowy hill! It was a little rainy that day so they let us go up by ourselves and we didn't have to pay for it at all which was nice.