Day 6, 7 - White Cliffs to Broken Hill

Schoolwork, boys crack rocks in the caravan park with a hammer. Drinking delicious Cobar water, hints of chlorine and mud, but not bad at all. White Cliffs water is not potable.

 Lunch, go noodling (fossicking in dirt piles)

Went on the White House dugout tour. An amazing Mediterranean looking place, thick white washed walls, mosaics, no doors to allow air flow.

 What a dugout can look like!

Underground living is not for everyone, but can be nicely done.

 More fossicking, go to Opal Den to buy some. The boys meet their children, their donkey, cats, dog and chickens. They had a blast running around. These are 4 of the 12 at the local primary school. One guy was the size of Louis but had a bike my size. He said Louis was fast.

Dinner by the campfire.

 Day 7 - more schoolwork, pack up, more room in the car! Check out White Cliff solar.

Parabolas with mirrors concentrate the sunlight to superheat water. The steam runs a reciprocating steam engine to generate electricity. It was a successful experiment, and a big advance for 1995.

 Going from White Cliffs to Broken Hill; near Wilcannia, the dirt road is green, and even has some water.

Day 5 - Opal hunting at last

Lazy Sunday - no school! We clear out of the expensive underground hotel and into the caravan park. Much easier in the daylight, less wind today, we fully unpack the car. Toilets are very clean, kitchen awesome, we have hot Tacos for lunch.

Opal mine tour

We started in the shop. Graham the guide showed us examples of polished ones, fossil opalised snails, rough pineapples, and a broken pineapple (that's about 50,000 down the tubes with one hit).

We check out the powered buckets that make moving dirt out of the hole easy.

Then we go for a wander underground. The earth is soft, so making a nice corridor is easy. The guide shows some opal in the wall and some rocks from Antarctica. These rocks were broken off by glaciers, then carried by ice bergs. It's amazing to think of Plesiosaurs swimming and ice bergs from Antarctica floating around here.

The guide carves some wall down. The hydraulic scraper has a paddle on the end and is electric powered and silent. You must listen for the tinkle of glass to catch the opal seam, then stop immediately before you smash it up! The miners use screwdrivers for the fine work. He asked for a volunteer. Louis is right at the front, the only one to shoot his hand up. Lou furiously scours the dirt. Then Ollie also gets in.  After searching the fallen dirt, then they both start attacking the wall with screwdrivers. Lou is still going when everyone else has left and the guide has to ask him to stop, to his strong disappointment.

Back at camp. It's down to about 7 deg C but pretty comfortable.

Dinner at the sports club - met Lindsay the owner of the White House dugout, and another guy who found a opalised Plesiosaur bone now sitting in the Smithsonian.

4th May

In Cobar, took boys for a jog around the block. Boys went out to buy milk and cereal - probably a good km away. Made friends with the lady in the supermarket who thought they were girls. She was surprised as Lou explained they're not allowed more than 20g in the 100 of sugar in a cereal, so she found them searching the different packets.

Bought jumper leads with a 600amp battery to be able to jump start the car in case.

Got to Wilcannia. Some gorgeous buildings. Others are crumbling, or with hoardings.







Driving along, the road is ridiculously green, goats and grass everywhere, even some pools of water by the road - v. unusual. With all the shrubby trees, it looks less like a desert than the earlier open fields of farms with nothing but red dirt. Long flat hills, can see for miles ahead on each slope top. Had lunch at a roadside stop about 100kms out, cold, windy, b-double trucks there also.

Got to White Cliffs at sundown. Lou can't wait to start hunting for Opals!

As the sun was setting, we staked a patch of dirt in the caravan park, tried putting up our tent, for the first time, in the wind. Gave up. Went to underground motel, a good experience. Exxy at $239 given the shared toilet. Wardrobe is a rhombus, electrical wiring not super professional.

 Wake up to the spectacular colours, and beautiful hills surrounding.

 A bit chilly, in the morning. Each cover is the shaft for ventilation into a room.

 The hills of White Cliffs used to be an inland sea?

Day 3, 3rd May

It's raining quite a bit today. After seeing the brown dead paddocks, this is good news! The direct road to Nyngan has dirt. Don't want to get bogged. We go the longer way.

Saw the museum at Nyngan - the 1990 flood, a bag of wool, typewriters, the train station, an Iroquois helicopter, pedal trike.

Signage on buildings used to be more modest before design for 60km/h reigned.

Rain clouds holding promise of drought break at Nyngan.









The solar plant outside Nyngan - power for 33,000 houses, the equivalent of taking 50,000 cars off the road. There was one lonely panel next to the viewing point.

Made it to Cobar. Tried replacing our spare tyre (too small) and get a second, but the owner at the shop said not to waste our money. That was nice of him!

Day 2, 2nd May

Watched My Cat From Hell on TV with Jackson Galaxy. Schoolwork going slow. Did a tour of the Tim's workshop in town, GC McCabe, builder. Saw the jointer that took the tips of Tony's fingers.

30km out of town is the Parkes telescope, very interesting. You can communicate by whispering and hear each other fine over 20m by using parabolic dishes.

 The Parkes telescope is a radio telescope. You can see stars in the visible part of the electro magnetic spectrum. You can also "hear" them using the audible frequencies. Other ones can tune in for UV etc that is not visible, but shows other information fine.

This dish was used during the first moon landing to pick up the video images, as the US was not pointing towards the moon at the time.

 About 50km out is the old Peak Hill gold mine. Can you believe they needed to move a tonne of earth to get an ounce (28 grams) of gold? Not environmentally friendly!! I would tattoo a ring on my finger next time.

 The path to the viewing platform.

Drove on the dirt to Tullamore. Almost hit a roo. He ran in front, Marie braked, then he doubled back right in front. We missed him by a metre or two, lucky roo! All the paddocks are huge, brown, with not a blade of grass to eat. The sheep look sad.







Staying tonight in Tottenham in charming pub. Dinner in the cafe costs $8.50 a burger. Banking is done at the post office. ANZ refuses to use the post. So they will switch banks. The owner has two mortgages and is planning to buy a building.

Tottenham is central. I want to go to Denmark and have never seen Eden. We are trying for the Corner, 703kms away. Depends on the rain...

1st May - day 1

Wrapped up the cabinets, delivered them to site, plus some wood, collected an old book of Mum's from Aunty Bev's, dropped keys to our place for Gabrielle, fed cat, drove back to Tony and Evonne's, then at midday we were off, after a month and a half of labouring.

Had panic about tyres that state max is 80psi, when the average tyre would run at like 35psi. Overfilled them to 45 just in case. It's ok for now, no blow outs.

Swapped drivers at Katoomba, stopped to get wine/chocolate in Bathurst, arrived Parkes 7.15pm, about 15 late. Tim's house is certainly a builder's house! Very impressive. Dinner was lovely, with him, Lee and bro Bernard and his sister in law Judy.

The following day, we're still trying to catch up on homework...

 Got a tour of the office, and the woodworking machines. At left are the plans of old jobs, in case they want to reference them for extensions etc.

On the right, the saw that can take any person's thumb off. I have to admit to being totally lucky not to put my hand into the portable circular saw at Tony's, gave Marie a heart attack.


Status: 300km done, car functioning ok, pants are getting tight - eek!

And we're off!

 The odometer at the start - 120481kms.

 That moment when you wonder how the hell you will get it all in.

Not glamorous, but successful - all the junk is in. We did cull a few boxes.

Some more farewells

 Sake night at Tony and Evonne's. Some great genuine stuff especially brought in direct. Nice with sushi.

 Gabrielle's 21st! Ang, Estefano, Gabby, Alexandra?, Steven and Adrian. Had a nice time, drank too many Cuban cocktails etc.

 Packing up the mess. Box it up! We will sort it out next time.

 Ollie thought he'd broken his toe for sure, but the xray says no, it seems. He's walking around fine at the time of writing, so all good I think.

See you in 8 months Baka.

FInshing off the cabinets

 Finally ready, glued, and clamped together. After 24 hours of glue drying, then it's heaps of sanding, filling, then two coats of oil.

 The gold standard - just 3 l/100km to get from our place to Tony and Evonne's.

 My dad's old gold ring. It has his initials on it. Now I'm wearing this on my pinkie.

 The final sand.

 Close up of the resin fill. This is after about three passes filling up holes. It still shows whirlpools where the holes are still sucking it down, plus two bubbles.

 Thank the Lord! The end is in sight - just a final coat of plain oil, too easy. This is my Super Mario look.

 How it should look once installed.

 Sanding max amounts of wood generates max amounts of dust coating my arms, legs and hair.

The starting point - some floppy, cupped, bowed, weathered wood.