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
The heritage society had done a great job at rescuing the various artefacts. I fell in love with the 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!
Poor dog has been finding the rocks and burrs of the Red Centre a bit hard going on his paws. We went to the vet to get advice and walked out with four small vinyl boots. After a bit of getting used to, Dog seems to have really taken to them, scampering around more than we have seen for a couple of years. Also, everyone who seems him in them comes over for a chat, so he is getting more pats too, which he loves.
We have been very lucky with good weather. The last place we were expecting rain though was Yulara, near Uluru (Ayres Rock). It was light, but wet enough to be a nuisance. I tied our clothes line under the awning, and that did the trick.
The road from Glen Helen to Kings Canyon was quite an adventure. It was our first long stretch of unsealed road on the trip. I had driven a kilometre in the Barooga State Forest finding Paradise beach, and about 500 metres to get to Stanton Bend at Rutherglen, and 20 km round trip to get to the Australian Museum of Dinosaurs near Winton, but this was a 120 km rattler. While most of the road was find, the few bad patches were horrible to drive – rattling at 40km/h, bone shaking at 60km/h and deafening at 80km/h. We managed to shake off and shatter one or our driving mirrors and dislocate our toilet flap.
Outback humour
The road was pretty straight, but there were a couple of blind bends when we went through gorges. We found the “politically incorrect” street sign shown in the left. I remember it from last time we drove this road (15 years ago). The tin on the other side had been amended from “Put um back down” to “Take a break”.
There are no cafes, cinemas or wifi hotspots in the bush, so you have to be more creative in the outback. A very common hobby is to dress termite mounds in spare clothes. These look disturbing like a group of people from the distance until you get close enough to realise.
