Driving north of Broken Hill (but other places too) is like being immersed in a Fred Williams painting. Surreal, stark and stunning! I wish that I could adequately explain so you might see the land as I see it - changing colours, textures, vegetation, plains and hills punctuated with the ever-present saltbush.
The Mundi Mundi plains are vast with riverbeds marked by straggly lines of trees. The Barrier Range which is ages old, is crowned here and there with outcrops of rocks (if only I knew more about geology). Wide sweeping dry river beds hemmed by River Red Gums and other eucalypts. Dust willy willies tear across the road, rise high in the air, building and reforming as they dash like banshees across parched plains into burnt blue skies. Wide skies festooned with handfuls of tiny white wispy puffballs tossed randomly into the air to hang suspended for a while. A landscape best viewed along a dirt road so no bitumen slashes coldly through the gentleness of the desert colours.
And here we are over 300 km north in Tibooburra which in the local language means ‘heaps of boulders’. These outcrops are over 400 million years old and supposedly rich in copper and gold. A gold rush in the 1880s brought 3000 people and infrastructure to the area but the rush petered out after not much more than 10 years. It is now dominated by grazing. The road north from Broken Hill, Silver City Hwy was once dirt (our preference) it will be completely sealed in a few years time. Sad! We parked our van against a mound of rocks backlit by a glowing sunset. More anon ......
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| The Barrier Range |
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| Although everything is parched, debris strewn across the road provides evidence of flash floods. |
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| This is a river of sand. |
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| Packsaddle Hotel - a watering hole along the road north. |
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