New South Wales

Eugowra – Where Carmel was born

Carmel was born at Dripping Rock farm near Eugowra and lived there for four years. Although she does not have many memories herself, being the youngest, she grew up on the stories he parents and siblings told of the place.

Our caravan as seen from Dripping Rock Homestead
Our caravan as seen from Dripping Rock Homestead

The homestead is on National Park land, so there are no dog shots below.

View of the shearing shed from the old homestead
View of the shearing shed from the old homestead

The original house on the property was converted to a shearing shed by Carmel’s dad and a new home erected down the hill. Carmel’s mum planted fruit trees around the home, many of which are still there are are covered in fruit.

Old homestead orchard
Old homestead orchard

The chicken coop is clearly recognisableOldChickenCoop

Unfortunately, the main homestead building burned down about five years ago and was cleared away rather than rebuilt. Nothing remains of the main building except black and white photos in Canberra.

Ash at the back gate looking towards where the homestead was.
Ash at the back gate looking towards where the homestead was.

 

Mining, New South Wales

Peak Hill – fossils and gold

We stopped over in Peak Hill to see the largest fish fossil in the world: 4.5 metre long Xiphactinus.

Replica of Large Fossil Fish in the world
Replica of Large Fossil Fish in the world

Slightly disappointingly, it is a model of a fossil found in Kentucky. However, I could not tell the difference, and it beautifully captures the detail, so I enjoyed it nonethless. There were also “real” trilobites…

Trilobite

sea ferns….

SeaFern

… and smaller, but real, fish fossils.

AnotherFossilFish

It’s a small collection, but worth a view if you are in town or passing through.

Peak Hill also has a gold mine.

YetAnotherMine

It was worked originally in the nineteenth century for a few months, and then again early this century for six years. There still is a lot of gold, but it is not economic to extract at present.

Humour, Mining, New South Wales, Sights

Cobar Heritage Museum and Peak Open Cut Mine

An old Pontiac Ute in Cobar
An old Pontiac Ute in Cobar

Cobar is called “Copper City”. They found a bit of gold amongst the copper, but that was just used to defray working costs of the mine – a nice problem to have. Although the mines are mostly abandoned now, there still is a lot of copper still – the owners are waiting for the price to rise.

Peak Open Cut in Cobar
Peak Open Cut in Cobar

The heritage society had done a great job at rescuing the various artefacts. I fell in love with the fire engine.

Cobar Fire Engine
Cobar Fire Engine

I also really want this for my work chair. The red button on the right would be my “publish the new web site” button. I reckon two joysticks would be better than a mouse!

Winch Chair from Cobar
Winch Chair from Cobar
New South Wales, Sights, Wildlife

Road to Cobar

White flowers like snow
White flowers like snow

The road from Broken Hill to Cobar was astonishingly green. It had clearly rained a lot recently. As a result, we saw a lot of wild life on this leg – more than we had seen throughout Northern Territory and South Australia put together. The winner of the group was this spiky fellow. He began digging in when he saw Dog.

Echidna

We saw a lot of emus, but this one had chicks so was quite hard to catch. Pardon the pixelation.

EmuAndChicks

Dog could not get near these, so had to do with their smaller cousins

BirdsOnRoadToCobar

There were other young ones too

RoosAndJoey

…and even some trees were in the mood for spring

Flowers

We pulled over at Mt  Grenfell Historic Site to see the Aboriginal Art. The reserve was badly sign posted and we inadvertently took off on a 3 hour walk up a mountain and only discovered our error after 45 minutes. I suppose that would cost us $80 at a gym, so we should not complain, and we did get to see the art in the end too.

AboriginalArt

Mining, New South Wales

Museums and Galleries of Broken Hill

Broken Hill is still principally a mining town, but has many museums and galleries which are worth a view. The railway museum was our first visit and my favourite.

I always visit the computer room first!
I always visit the computer room first!

I loved the old surveying equipment. I am sure this is very close to what my grandfather used in his surveying days.

Surveying equipment used by the railway engineers
Surveying equipment used by the railway engineers

The astonishing thing for me was that Broken Hill was a major rail junction. There was a tram line that ran from here to Silverton, which is now a ghost town. These steam trains pulled that train.

Old Engines of Broken Hill
Old Engines of Broken Hill

They also had the Silver Comet, a diesel train that used to connect the various mining towns.

Silver Comet crosses the Sydney Harbour Bridge
Silver Comet crosses the Sydney Harbour Bridge

There was a lot of cute paraphernalia from the train ways. I liked this inspection car.

BetterThanThePedalVersion

The next museum was the silver mint – lots of lovely things to see and buy, but no photos allowed. Finally, we visited Pro Hart’s gallery. A video presentation told me a lot about this artist – I just thought he messed up carpets.

ProHart