Way the heck Out Back!

After spending a few days in the bush, we moved on to the outback. In case you haven’t heard, Aussies consider anything not in the city to be the bush, and then as soon as any hint of civilization fades away and pure desolation appears you have reached the outback. Friday morning we moved from that last piece of normal human existence into the great beyond. Coming from the beautiful big sky of Montana, I know what a beautiful sky is, and the outback is certainly that. Nichole was about to shove the camera up my backside as I told her again and again to take picture of everything. It started on Friday morning when we drove through the last bits of eucalyptus forests and the fog was all around. It felt a bit like Ichabod Crane was about to come riding out of the shadows. Then the sun came out and burnt off the fog and this amazing desert came alive. The colors were absolutely indescribable. We drove on through the day to Broken Hill dodging kangaroos, emus, sheep, and goats along the highway. Who knew the outback was so full of goats and sheep? After skating into Broken Hill as the sun just snuck away, we put our tired eyes to sleep. They worked hard after discerning real roos from busharoos (bushes we thought looked like kangaroos), stumparoos (tree stumps we thought looked like kangaroos), and manglaroos (dead roos along the highway).
Saturday morning we went for a hike in a place called “the Living Desert”. It was so cool! There were kangaroos all over the place. At the top of the hill were some sculptures. In addition to being a gateway to outback, Broken Hill is also supposed to be a real art hub. The sculptures at the top were very cool and the views were mesmerizing. After that stop we went down the road to Silverton. This is where a ridiculous amount of movies have been filmed, including Mad Max 2 and 3 and Razorback. They even had a replica of the Mad Max car out front. This isn’t as big of deal until you see the place and that there is nothing there but a bar and some abandoned buildings. Why they would choose this place is beyond me. Just beyond the town was a lookout that the views of the desert were so flat you could see the curvature of the Earth. It is so empty there, there aren’t even power lines, just desert for as far as you can see.
We then decided to dodge to roos again and roll on down to a place called White Cliffs. This is a town so far out that they just got power in the 90’s. It is so far out in the desert that they live in caves! We actually stayed in a hotel that was underground in a cave. They mine opals here and then use the mines from the opal digging to hole out a house. It was something to see. The town even had a golf course, but there isn’t any grass out there so they play on the dirt. The greens were just fine silt. And, because it is so hot out there, they only play at night with glow in the dark balls. This makes any town in Eastern Montana look like an absolute metropolis.
On Sunday, we drove all the way back to Melbourne. It was a long drive back, but worth every last kilometer. All said and done we put about 3000 kms on the rental car. I’d say we definitely got our money’s worth out of that thing.

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