This year's trip was a start & stop affair until we could both get some work completed around our homes and attend to other family matters. Then we could not decide which way to go, as we wanted to go to Perth to see Neil and Susan, but we also wanted to go North out of the cold southern temperatures.

Finally, what made our mind up to go north, was the fact that after 38 outbreaks of Fruit Fly around the area, we could not take any fruit into SA! And, as we love our early morning fresh Orange, Tangelo and Ellendale Mandarin juice, it was North with three large boxes of fruit!

I had also decided to try and teach myself about "Apple Pages and I Photo Nine", so this diary of our trip is done on Pages with the even more advanced "Aperture IPhoto" system!

I hope for Shirley's sake my decision works out O.K. (Not compatible with MS Word so had to be reformatted when we got home.)

We departed from Shirley's about 10.20am and, after picking up the S/Daily from Fishers in Wentworth, we next stopped for a delightful homemade pasty lunch at the now water filled Lake Popiltah rest stop just south of Coombah.

Coombah is the half way mark to Broken Hill, where we were once again greeted by the usual group of Apostle birds but, as the pasty was so nice, there was none left for them!

We both found the countryside in simply wonderful condition following the enormous rains early in the year. The growth at times was so great that fences were at times indistinguishable amongst the extraordinary growth.

We arrived at the Top Tourist van park in Broken Hill about 3pm. We had been fortunate to get the exact same en-suite powered site (now $36.00) that we had in 2009 so were very happy with our site after working so very hard and constantly to get ready to leave for our holiday break.

Broken Hill is a wonderfully interesting city with its world-wide renowned mines and exciting history. We have been here a number of times in the past and every visit we find it just as or more interesting than before. We only received a few spots of rain during our drive up to Broken Hill but could see the heavy dark clouds building behind us. However from the BOM site it appears the Mallee and Mildura only received a few mm over the next 24 hours. Weather is lovely during the day and a bit cold at night.

During the day we purchased another hose connector tailpiece, as that Chinese fella 'Sumwun', had misplaced our piece. We also checked out the local camping shop for fittings for our van toilet cassette but as it worked Ok that night we have decided not to replace anything at the moment.

As we also had trouble with TV reception, we checked with the office and were told surprisingly, that we should switch off our TV booster because the signal is extremely strong in the park. (And that fixed the problem!)

I sent Josh a text for his excellent school work improvement, and rang Jane after receiving a text from her.

Being Friday, we as usual, enjoyed our Friday special drinks of Champagne and Scotch with nibbles of Avocado dip with Brie on Biscuits and or Chips.

For dinner we enjoyed some more of the excellent homemade lamb vegetable soup that a renowned cook had previously prepared for us.