We were all up with the sun this morning, getting ready to head off early to get to Broken Hill. During the night Steven & Tamara had to keep guard from the bogan family next door who thought it would be great to play with sparklers at 11pm.
We all had our brekkie and were in the car at 8.30am. Steve took off first, next thing (I know, something else couldn’t possible go wrong, could it?) we hear a bang from the back of Steven’s car, followed by an even louder one. The front of his caravan was sitting on the ground. He had snapped his tow bar tongue in half. Luckily the locals were nice and directed the boys to the nearest wrecking yard and engineering shop. They were back within the hour with a towbar from a VT Commodore and Neil had his heart set on a XT Ute he had found at the wrecking yard. Kelley had to convince him to not sell the camper in exchange for a car trailer to bring the Ute home with us. We were on our way at 11am but Stevens’ car wasn’t sitting right and we had to go back to the Engineering shop to have some adjustments made. I think the boys made a friend for life with the owner of Chidgey Engineering, who let the boys into his workshop and let them use anything they needed. We learnt 2 things from this. 1. We were lucky it didn’t happen while Steven & Tamara were driving; 2. Even though something bad happened, some good things came out of it by meeting some wonderful locals.
Finally we left Cobar at about 12 and we had another smooth run heading towards Emmdale. About 40kms before Emmdale, pregnant Kelley had to pee and couldn’t hold any longer. She had to pee in the bush, but it was better than holding on. As we had to catch up to the others, Neil managed to put his foot down and got up to 90mph. Yes, we have photos to prove it. We made it to Emmdale at about 2pm for petrol and some lunch. We all enjoyed lamb roast and gravy rolls and plenty of chips. We were back on the road again, this time all the girls were driving. The next town was Wilcannia; however we had many conversations with truckies and were advised not to stop due to the unfriendly locals. Apparently they used to stop all the cars on the highway and demanded a toll be paid to cross the bridge. On the way, we managed to catch a glimpse of some wild emus and lots of wild goats. We drove on through to the next fuel stop at Little Topar and were met by a very enthusiastic service station owner who was taking lots of photos of the car. Neil took over the driving as Broken Hill was only 80kms away. We arrived in Broken Hill at about 6.20pm and after a lap through town settled into Lake View Caravan Park which over looks the mine, and obviously a lake. Not much was done tonight; we were all tired after today’s adventure. Update on William, he still isn’t better – is still a bit warm, very clingy to Kelley and slept most the day in the car. Hopefully he wakes up nicely in the morning.