Broken Hill, Bourke, Canberra

Day One - Churchill/Broken Hill

Left at 6:30 and rode to my local service station to find them closed. Being Boxing Day they are opening at 7:00. I'm fairly low on petrol but I'll start the trip and hopefully find a station open later on. 15 km down the road and the reserve light comes on, not a good sign. I stop at Yarragon only to find the only station closed. I continued on and should have stopped at Bunyip as there was some sign of activity, but oh no, I think I can make Nar Nar Goon. At the first dip before Gumbyah I run out of petrol. So that's what it sounds like! I remember someone telling me that you're not supposed to run fuel injected bikes dry, so off with the ignition. Well, what now? I decide to push the bike and immediately notice how heavy it is. Lots of cars going by and no one is stopping. Finally after I reach opposite Gumbyah a van stops and asks what's wrong. I tell him. The man is a bike rider from Yallourn North (no wonder he stopped) and offered to get me petrol from Nar Nar Goon. I readily accepted and he set off. I'm wondering if he really intends returning or not, so I continue pushing the bike and get to the next dip in the road by the time he returns with 4 litres of petrol. He only asked for the cost of the petrol which was $4. The can looked surprisingly new and I can only assume he bought that as well but didn't mention it. A second man who stopped was also a biker. I thanked him for stopping and said everything was under control. All those cars and only two stopped. It would be reasonable to say that this was not the high point of my day, but my faith in other bikers is justified. (I measured the distance I moved the bike and it came to 1.5 km, not a bad effort for an old guy.)

Stopped at Mildura for lunch at Subway. Filled up and had intended to fill up again at Wentworth but everything was shut, so I was forced to stop at Coombah as I didn't want a repeat of the bike pushing exercise before Broken Hill. Taking Roger's advice I fill up and go inside and tell the lady how much petrol I'd taken. She wrote this amount down and when it came to give me change she had just that little bit of trouble discerning the difference between a twenty cent and a fifty cent coin. Reading the community signs in the window I noticed that the Roadhouse is up for sale. Any takers Roger?

Arrived at Broken Hill and followed the directions to the motel and got lost. That fork in the road did it. I should have turned right instead of left. Finally found the Motel, booked in and unloaded the bike. A quick check of the tail light revealed I had new problems, the whole of the right hand side is loose. I suspect a nut has come loose. I try and remove the red tail light lens to find the screw holding it on has a stripped thread, no way I can get it off without doing any damage. Oh well, it will just have to wait until I get back.

Had dinner at the Musicians Club, where else? The staff seemed a bit remote, in fact they looked like they wished they could be somewhere else and I was keeping them away from what ever that was. No live music, so what gives with the name? I'm told there is music tomorrow night.

Back to the Motel, a shower, a couple of cans of Jim Beam and goodnight.

Day Two - Broken Hill/Silverton/Menindee

Up at 9:00 and rode to Silverton. Yup, just like they said, a Ghost Town and dusty too! I continued on to the lookup over the Mundi Mundi plains and found another biker there. He was from Cockatoo, my what a small world. We had a chat and he mentioned that he used to sell BMW's five or so years ago and asked me how mine was going. I said just fine except for the tail light. We walked over and he noticed that the right rear indicator had turned itself around since Broken Hill and was now facing forward and was starting to cut into the paintwork. GRRR! We wished each other well and I continued on to the Umberumberka Dam. I found the tour bus there jammed full with three people, a man and two ladies. The man had just won his 250 licence and one of the ladies had ridden a BMW ages ago until she 'fell off' and never returned to the saddle.

Rode back to Broken Hill and stopped at a Shell Shop and bought a roll of tape that was a similar colour to the mudguard. Back to the Motel and wrapped up the tail light to stop further damage. The task was to stop the tail light assembly from flapping and the stop the indicator arm from turning. The fixit job lasted until I had the tail light assembly replaced yet again.

Had lunch at Hungry Jacks.

Rode to Menindee and found the place very dry, in fact from the lookout to Lake Menindee all I could see was mud. I kept going into town and filled up. Not seeing all that much I headed back and was very glad that I took the road to Copi Hollow to end up at a beautiful lake. I was in swimming in a flash. Ah, now this is the life.

Back to the motel and checked out the CBD. Had dinner at Pizza Hut. Went to the Barrier Social Democratic Club to check out a band that was performing there. The bands name is 'Rustic' with two guys: One singing and playing acoustic guitar the other just playing lead guitar. They used a drum machine as their rhythm. The only thing missing was the bass, sort of sounded empty. They played straight Country music and had quite a few dancers up. Not my cup of tea but they were keeping the patrons happy. Onto the Musicians Club and found a MIDI Band name 'Mumbo Jumbo': Two guys on guitars, a Rubenesque lady on vocals and MIDI backing (Drums, Bass, Strings, etc). Their songs were from the 70's, 80's and 90's. They were working hard and so were the patrons, pity they weren't on the same level. The patrons just wanted to get drunk or merge into the background. I've seen that before. Drank my Coke and rode back to the Motel.
A shower, another Jim Beam and off to sleep.

Day Three - Broken Hill/Daydream Mine/DelPrats Mine

Went to the Tourist Information building and asked for mine tours. Only two to choose from: The Daydream Mine and DelPrats Mine. Being a Saturday DelPrats were only running one tour at 2:00 pm. OK, I'll go to the Daydream mine instead.

Set off for Silverton and took the Daydream mine exit. Hmm, dirt road, have to be careful. I was warned about this but was assured the road was in good condition. I continued on, getting a little faster as my confidence grew. Four gates on the way were a pain to open and close. The site of the old smelter was quite unexpected and almost seemed unearthly. Around the corner was the mine.
I parked and went into the only building to be greeted by long tables a what looked like church pews and a few people. Seems the mine is now owned by a family: Dad, Mom and Son. They take turns to do the tours. I missed the last tour so I sat down and started chatting with the father. He'd been an aircraft mechanic and had been around including some time at the Kimberly's.
The son took our tour which initially started with just me but grew to ten. Each of us had to wear a hard hat and a lead acid battery/light unit. A problem immediately became apparent when it was noticed that all of the belts that support the lead acid battery were too short. No problems, just put two together. The mine was quite different to any other mine I'd seen regarding the use of backfill. Seems the miners had taken the time to take the useless bits of stone and backfill the areas they had excavated. I guess I should have asked why
I was quite amused when the Son announced we had to go down to level Two. He informed us that the sloping shaft we were going to take had never had steps but the new owners had cut some into the slope since. The original miners had used ropes to navigate the shaft. Having announced this he took off down the stairs with all the grace and speed of an ice skater. He knew exactly where to put his feet, pity about the rets of us. Now the 'steps' weren't really steps but were pads cut here and there. You really had to know what you were doing, thank goodness for the handrail. One of our group was a family of five. Dad, Mum and three children. Seeing the guide just glide down the children decided this was good fun and followed in kind only the have their parents yell in horror to slow down. I had quite a lot of trouble as I was big and tall, I had to take my time. Thank goodness for the hard hat. By the time we finished the tour I was just that little bit uncomfortable. All that crouching and physical activity was just a bit too much for me. Still, I'm glad I made the effort.

I had just enough time to make the DelPrats tour so off I go and arrive at 2:15 but was still able to take the tour. The tour had so many people that it too three trips to get them all down. The last group were waiting as I showed up. The tour guide was an ex-miner who had a dry-ironic sort of humour that had me wondering how much of his talk was hot air. We didn't travel far horizontally, perhaps a 100 metres to where seats and a display of some equipment was setup and that's where we stayed. We had demonstrations of the drill and the scoop bucket/wagon all run by compressed air. I hadn't realised that the miners were allocated jobs and for each job they had to haggle with a mine permanent for the pay rate, so many dollars per ton or per foot of face excavated. I also didn't realise that the excavated rock was crushed locally and then shipped by train to the smelters. That explains why all of the train carriages have plastic covers, they are basically carrying rock dust.

I decided that tonight I'd have a drink with my meal and so I decided to leave the bike at the Motel and take a taxi. I decided to have dinner at MacGreggors Cafe which is situated on the main mullock heap in town. The building comprises a combined Cafe and gift shop. You can purchase a pass to walk out on a steel walk way to the Miners Memorial. The Miners Memorial is a static display of miners killed organised by year of death. I somehow suspect that only a few miners that died are on this list.

The taxi arrives at 7:30 and takes me to the Cafe. I have a table all to myself overlooking the town and the sunset. I had Brochette for entree, Fillet Mignon for main and Bavarian cake for sweets all helped along by a bottle of Riesling. Very civilised.

The Taxi arrives at 10:00 as arranged and I get in. I notice that the driver is protected by a plastic shield that goes from pillar behind him around to nearly the front of the dash. I ask him why the elaborate protection. I'm told that a few years ago a taxi driver was stabbed when an aboriginal lost the plot and stabbed the driver when he demanded the fare for the ride. Did I say civilised somewhere?

I had planned to go back to the Motel but changed my mind and asked to be dropped off at the Musicians Club. Ordered a Coke and watched Mumbo Jumbo perform. When they had a break I went up to their table and asked if I could sing a song and play guitar. A few nervous looks were exchanged around the table and was surprised to get an 'OK'. I thanked them and explained that I am in the same game they are and it would be nice for me to say that I'd played Broken Hill. We had a good old chat were they explained to me that they are from Adelaide, only 5 hours away, not far away at all. They told me that they'd announce me as a special artist otherwise the patrons might think its a Karaoke night and be flooded with people. Another factor in my favour was that yet again the patrons weren't interacting with the band to a large degree, just one or two tables. If the night was any busier they would have had to say 'No!' I picked 'Mustang Sally' and the song went quickly. I perform the song in 'A' in my set by they do it in 'C', so I had to stretch a little to get the notes.

Arrived back at the Motel around 1:00 and went to sleep.

Day Four - Broken Hill/Parkes

Left at 5:30 in the dark. After about 30 minutes the sun made an appearance to reveal that the sky was overcast with dark clouds in every direction except for East. By the time I'd reached Emmdale I had passed the clouds and had a clear blue sky above me.

About an hour before Cobar I stopped to tighten the left rear view mirror. The nut had loosened and the mirror was just flapping away.

Took a left turn at Cobar with the intention of riding to Burke. I took the turnoff that had Bourke and Louth signs. I followed what I thought was the way and thought "Gee, I can see Louth signs but not Burke signs, something's up!" And indeed there was, I was on the Louth road. I realised this sad fact 35 km out when the bitumen stopped. Not happy. Made my way back and spotted the Burke turnoff sign. I continued through the intersection, did a U-Turn and looked for similar Burke sign. None to be seen, no wonder I missed it, it wasn't there.

The first animal story for today occurred on the Loath road. I spotted about 6 goats up ahead on the road. They'd already heard me and were moving off so I thought I'd help them by using the horn. That worked great, they really moved on then, BUT, it also moved on an Emu that I hadn't seen and it ran across the road in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and only missed the bird by a few metres.

Arrived at Burke and found just about everything closed. I noticed that all of the shops in the CBD were heavily shuttered as I'd seen at Tennant Creek , all of a sudden I didn't think this was such a good place to be. I stopped at the petrol station, filled up and ate some grapes that I had bought at the local IGA.

The second animal story for today occurred when I was eating the above mentioned grapes. Behind a cyclone wire fence there was a very old dog who thought I'd like to share, so I did. He didn't think much of the grape I gave him but at least he seemed friendly. Three young aboriginals showed up to buy ice creams. As they came to near to where the dog was I noticed his behaviour change and gave them a good 'barking to'.

Stopped at Coolabah for a drink. A lady there told me to be careful of the Roo's as they come out early if there's cloud cover. Stopped at Nyngan and was finally able to buy some lunch. Better late than never I guess.
I had planned to stay at Forbes but I just ran out of energy and stayed at Parkes. I stopped at the first Motel that had a vacancy and a POOL! The Motel is the Bushman's Motor Inn and is a very friendly place. The owner, Peter Manton used to ride dirt and ag bikes. His father used to a ride a BMW until he couldn't physically handle the bike anymore and retired from riding. Quick meal at Pizza Hut, a swim, shower, can of Jim Beam and in bed by 9:30. Slept until the alarm went off next morning.

I really pushed myself today as I didn't have enough sleep the night before. I was having a hard time staying awake all day. Have to remember that an early start requires and early turn in time the night before.

Day Five - Parkes/Churchill

Felt really good after a decent nights sleep. Stopped at Canberra/Dickson for lunch at Subway. I was lucky as they'd only been open a week and they were a half a block away from a music store I wanted to look through.

The only animal story for the day was passing a snake that had tried to cross the road and had its rear end squashed by a car. Mind you the snake didn't take kindly to this and was trashing all over the place like a high voltage wire that's hit the ground. I pulled over a little and lifted my right leg for added safety as I passed.

Managed to dodge all of the storms except for one between Rosedale and Traralgon. It wasn't heavy or long enough for me to change into my wet weather gear so I just got a little damp. I stopped in at my daughters and son-in-law to tell them I was back. The son-in-law makes the observation "You look tired!". I responded with "You should have seen me yesterday!".

Notes:

I can see that I'm going to have to make or buy a device that straps to either the tank or the handle bars that holds either a map or a list of towns that I plan to go through. Far too many times I have missed turnoffs and the like and ended up taking the wrong assumed right road. I'm getting tired of this, so I'm going to take some action. Stopping, unsuiting, getting out the map, working out where you are and suiting up again is just a nuisance I can do without.

I'm also going to have to stop chatting with Motel owners. When I arrived home I found the Motel key in my pocket. Oops!