Days 5 and 6

 Hello! 

Day 5

We started the day with a walk to look at some Aboriginal art. At the start, there was a kangaroo eyeing us off as we walked along the path. We eyed it back as it just stood there, watching. All of a sudden, Chris whacked my arm and yelled "stop!" 

A snake slithered across the path. "I nearly stepped on it!" a shell shocked Chris said. "I only saw it cos it moved a little, otherwise I definitely would have stepped on it. I just wasn't paying attention." 

(To be fair, I'd kind of forgotten about snakes. We'd spotted spiders in the undergrowth last night, as their eyes reflected in my headtorch light and they looked like jewels, glinting in the light.) We (carefully!) went over to where it went for cover for a better look. Although there is more to snake identification than simply comparing images (there are multiple colour and pattern variations of brown snakes for instance), the snake we saw was a dead ringer for several stock photos on google, so Chris thinks it was a King Brown snake (which is actually a black snake by genus - don't ask!) It is the 6th most venomous snake in Australia, so, yeah. A bit of a close call. We stomped our way through the rest of the walk, and saw no other wildlife 😉

Can you spot the snake?

We then drove to Wilcannia, which was to be our stop for the night. The inverter in the car had stopped working, so it was difficult for us to charge things and Chris needed to do some work on his laptop. We were going to get a cabin for the electricity, but they were all a bit expressive, so we ended up staying at a powered site at Victory Park Caravan Park for $30. It was very luxurious there, actually - great showers, lovely toilets and washing machines. There was lush grass to camp on. The Milky Way was out in force and we saw shooting stars.

Day 6:

A great start to our day - we finally worked out the secret of rolling up the swag and getting it in the waterproof cover easily, yaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy! We've had to fight with it up til now - it just never wanted to go in. What a celebration! 

Chris hefted it onto the roof of the Jimny, whilst I packed up other stuff and I heard a swear word come from the other side of the car. Then another one. This was different to his normal level of swearing so I was alarmed. Chris' carabina had opened and he'd dropped the car keys at some point, somewhere... I mean, it HAD to be when we were camping on 6inch tall, lush green grass didn't it? Not the bare dirt we had been camping on until now...

We painstakingly searched through the grass, retraced steps to the showers, checked the car and had no luck finding them. 

"I wonder if they're in the swag?" I said. 

We had to get the swag down off the car and unroll our beautiful work - what a waste! 😉 But there, on top of the mattress were the keys - phew! And you know what, we were able to roll the swag up as well as before so we definitely cracked the code!

Our next stop was Broken Hill. I had this ad playing in my mind every time I heard the the name:

https://youtu.be/GdQ4LIrcnQM?si=78X_Q7c1nQ2_RQLW

We went to the information centre to gather some intel on the area and signed up to a walking tour the following morning. We made our way to The Boken Hill Pub for lunch, where I was totally expecting normal pub grub to be on the menu - this being a middle of nowhere mining town after all - but there were all sorts of fancy dishes on offer. And the food was delicious! We decided to stay a couple of nights and booked at a camp-site in the Living Desert State Park. After wandering around the town a bit, but most things being closed as it was Sunday, we grabbed some food for dinner and then headed to our camp-site. 

"The Swag Illuminations"

After the heat of the day had gone down a bit, we made our way over to the Living Desert Sculptures, which is a group of carved rocks made by a bunch of international artists in 1993. It turns out that Broken Hill is a bit of a Mecca for artists. There are several galleries around town, lots of other sculptures and art, and this is where the five Brushmen of the Bush collaborated too. It was a lovely place to be as the sun went down and changed the colours of the rocks around us.

After a shower (and the flies had gone to bed) we went to cook dinner. There were BBQs up for use, so we thought we'd cook that way to save our fuel. Unfortunately, the BBQ wouldn't turn on, so we had to walk over the main campervan cooking area. As soon as we turned the light on, we were bombarded by moths. As you may or may not know, I quite like insects and crawly things, but with two exceptions - cockroaches and moths. I HATE them. Moths are fast, flighty, erratic, and sound horrifying when flying past my ears. I'm always scared that they're going to get caught in my hair. And some of the moths were HUGE. Maybe 6cm across. Terrifying. The food was taking aaaages to cook and more and more moths joined us. It was a traumatic experience and I won't say anymore about it. The beer back at our swag was much needed...

Roadtrip numbers...

Flies eaten so far: at least two, could be more

Moths eaten so far: not known but probably 10+. Many landed on the BBQ whilst cooking 

Echidnas seen so far: none.

What a good looking pair of roosters