DAYS 52 - 60 (7/6 - 15/6): Broken Hill to Nyngan to Sydney (Wilyakali to Weilwan to Dharug/Eora countries)

 DAY 52 (7/6): What a miserable day to wake up to.  We had quite a storm last night and there is still lightning around the place, although not in Broken Hill itself.  Still raining off and on, sometimes heavily, sometimes only just.

I think we have decided to just head to Sydney and spend a bit more time with family.  We were on our way there anyway and all the alternative routes are impassable at the moment.  With that in mind, we are going to have a lazy day in Broken Hill today do a little browsing around and sightseeing but not much.  It is not long since we were here and the day, with its rain and strong winds, just didn't lend itself to pleasant tourism.  

Driving through town in the rain was interesting.  There were lots of overflowing gutters and little rivers running down the middle of streets.  These helped clean the bottom of our dirty car!

We were hoping that the cafe at the top of the Line of Lode site overlooking Broken  Hill would be open, a year on from when we were here, but disappointingly it wasn't. A good job of landscaping has been done and now it appears the developer (the Council, the mine??) awaits a lessee for the area.  It was not such different weather to when we'd been up here before, just this time the clouds were heavy.  The wind was strong.

On our way up to the Line of Lode site, we were stopped at a level crossing just before the beginning of a loooong goods train carrying many containers of contents unknown.  2 diesel engines and 104 carriages later (approx. 20 of which had nothing on them), which we figured is at least 50 B-doubles off the road, we were allowed through.  1.5 km of train!  On our way back down we were again stopped at the level crossing for a goods train going the opposite direction.  This one was a poor cousin to the first, with only 84 carriages, approximately 30 of which were empty, in addition to the two diesel engines.  Only about 1 km long.  Why don't we use more trains?

We visited a few shops, including Outback Whips and Leather (what a name!), and a couple of bookshops.  One of these, interestingly enough, was a social enterprise aiming to support the literacy and love of reading of outback children and their families.  This had so many great children's books.  I could have bought the shop out.

I remembered a few interesting signs from last time we were in Broken Hill and I found a new one this time.  What stores? We didn't see any.

We decided to support local business and have dinner at the Soull Cafe.  Garlic bread, a delicious pizza, decadent desserts and coffee later, we both walked out minus only $53.  Very good value.

DAY 53 (8/6): Last night's winds blew away the rain and ensured we had a dry camper to pack up this morning.  We are heading to Nyngan today via the Barrier Hwy, by now NOT my favourite road.  It is tedious driving, the monotony broken only by the hundreds of goats and fewer emus alongside the road. 

We stopped off at Wilcannia for morning tea and a rest stop somewhere east of Cobar for lunch. Finally, have ended up at a very acceptable shire-provided free camp by the Bogan River Weir at Nyngan.  

A clear night means I am enjoying moths again while Pete got to know his new whip.

DAY 54 (9/6): Another long day of driving to get to Sydney but fortunately, with an audiobook time travels faster than without. Although the head unit in our car is pretty terrible, it copes with audiobooks okay. We stopped at Tomingley for morning tea then (the toilets at the BP - ugh!) then headed down towards Peak Hill and across to Molong via a locality called Baldry.  About 40 km of this route was on a well-kept dirt road - a rather attractive drive. We passed a national park that we will have to investigate one day, Goobang NP. Not today.  It is cold and we now have our minds set on Sydney.

At Molong we stopped for a few minutes to look at a junkyard place that contained a few interesting junk sculptures, then headed towards Orange. A pie and spinach and fetta roll at a pie shop sustained us for the rest of the journey.  While crossing the Blue Mountains, we decided to call in to a friend's shop in Glenbrook that we had never been to.  While Google told us that it would be closed, we decided to try anyway and it was wonderful to find her still there.  It was a very quick catchup but good all the same.

Onwards to Mum's and Dad's place in Sydney.

DAYS 55 and 56 (10/6 and 11/6): These have been quiet days, pottering around the garden, going for short walks and catching up with Mum's and Dad's news. I cooked a bit, including dinner and the simplest biscuits I've ever made from a recipe Mum got from one of her craft group friends.

DAY 57 (12/6): Mum and Dad were wanting to catch up with a friend who is now in a nursing home in Hunter's Hill, so we drove out there for morning tea, dropped them off and walked around Hunter's Hill for a while.  This was a really interesting walk looking at various old sandstone buildings and fences, including the old Town Hall, still used by the council, and various houses both large and small. 

We also found a little reserve on the Lane Cove River part of the Harbour that we could walk down to using very old and uneven sandstone steps.  At the bottom were Sydney Rock Oysters (not that you'd eat them) and mangroves.

After we'd picked up Mum and Dad, we drove around Hunter's Hill and Woolwich for a while, finding all sorts of little streets and views we had not known about.  I have never seen Gladesville Bridge from this angle.

DAY 58 (13/6): At long last, after many years of wanting to, we went out to the Australian Botanic Gardens at Mt Annan today.  Dad wanted to do some work at the Herbarium so Mum, Pete and I had about 4 hours to entertain ourselves.  We began by exploring a garden hill just near the visitor centre and cafe. Although there weren't huge numbers of plants in  flower, this part of the Gardens is a very attractive garden with a variety of vegetation types. Everything is native in these Botanic Gardens and the huge variety of plants makes you realise how easy it should be to create a beautiful and colourful native garden.  

There was a lovely view at the top of this garden. 

Going up and down this hill garden gave us an appetite for morning tea which we enjoyed in the cafe.  The Gardens have two main road circuits that lead to various themed gardens. There are mountain bike trails and kilometres of walking trails as well.  We will have to come back.  Today, after morning tea, we took one of the circuits and had a look at a few Gardens and Pete and I walked up to the clock of human involvement, similar to one we had seen in Wellington, NZ last year. 

We then visited a small section of the Herbarium that is open to the public and the Plant Bank, in which seeds and tissue cultures of a many native plants as possible are kept.  Both buildings were interesting architecturally and for what they contain. Well worth visiting. 

After lunch and another drive, we heard from Dad that he was finished so went and picked him up.  He had had a good day too so, tired but happy and satisfied we all returned home. 

DAY 59 (14/6): Almost 27000 steps of walking later we are retiring for the day.  We had arranged with Tom and Kate to meet them after work to enjoy Vivid together so decided to make a day of it in the city.  We had also arranged to meet up with one of the people we'd met on our Simpson Desert tour who was also in Sydney to see Vivid. 

We had a lovely time with him, meeting his wife, walking around Circular Quay and the Opera House and enjoying a long lunch together. Afterwards, Pete and I walked up to Town Hall to visit a bookshop and look, unsuccessfully, for a particular type of padlock.  We then headed back down to Circular Quay to meet up with Tom and Kate. 

It was lovely to see them, and Vivid lived up to previous years, although this year we paid to see the display in the Botanic Gardens - worth it.

The last bit of Vivid we saw was the drone show. Pretty amazing - hundreds of drones doing all sorts of formations including these ones.

We then had to battle the crowds to the trains. We were lucky to get seats so the train trip home wasn't too bad. 

DAY 60 (15/6): Our last day in Sydney was spent packing and spending time with Mum and Dad.  Lovely to see them, especially good to see that their clash with Covid seems to have left them with no battle scars.