We encountered our first major hiccup on Monday. After thinking we were taking up permanent residency in Cobar due to some of Adam’s work commitments keeping us there, we had a break in the day and decided to drive from Cobar to the next town – a mere 40 minutes away – to have a change of scenery for the night. BIG MISTAKE!!! About 20 minutes out of Cobar, Adam realized that we hadn’t activated the we-have-Elon-Musk-to-thank Starlink, the satellite that enables us to work from anywhere. (We hadn’t needed to use it yet, as we’d had mobile data up till now.) Funny thing … you need THE INTERNET to connect to Starlink, and 20 minutes outside Cobar, there was no internet. Should we go back? Nah, let’s try the NEXT town. No internet. Let’s keep going. No internet. Long story short? No internet … evah! Our supposed 40-minute trip turned into a seven-hour journey (mostly in the big, scary dark) to Broken Hill (home of the movie Priscilla, Queen of the Desert). Hello to thousands of wild goats in the road (at least they’d get out of the way). Hello roos (more likely to jump right in front of us). Long, dark, straight stretch of road.
Thankfully, Adam drove the whole time, as I am blind as a bat with night driving, and I was in a state of near paralysis in the passenger seat. So, this was our first big hiccup of the trip, but we arrived safely and much relieved to Broken Hill at about 11pm. NOT our finest day. And now we have activated Starlink and should not (knock on wood) have any more connectivity issues.
Other “highlights” from the journey. We stopped at a roadhouse diner:
Here, we had some of the biggest burgers I’ve ever seen. Aussies give Americans a lot of crap about portion size, but check this out:
Waking up to Day 5 in Broken Hill, we are truly in the Outback now. Lots and lots of red dirt. We had a delish breakfast at The Silly Goat (thanks for the recommendation, Warwick and Julie!), then explored the lovely historic mining town on foot. Some great old buildings, lots of classic country pubs, and the Trades Hall, among other stuff:
In the Trades Hall, I particularly liked this list, with the Aussie nicknames:
Then we drove up to the Line of Lode miners’ memorial. A touching tribute to those injured or killed in the mines, and sprawling views of Broken Hill. Some photos:
On a side note, Adam is NOT coping with the flies! On another side note, here are the tea towels that he is so up in arms about:
My husband did not get the memo on “don’t sweat the small stuff.” (Though I’m sure he would say the same about me. But he doesn’t have a blog now, does he?)
Anyway … loving Broken Hill so far — lovely country town. More exploring tomorrow.
I thought you must have been buying souvenir tea towels; that’s why they were adding up.
Oh no. It’s just that in the van, tea towels serve multiple purposes — keeping sink cover/stove cover from rattling, hand towels, surface cleaners, and indeed, tea towels. And it is driving “someone” crazy. On the souvenir front, he has done OK — he’s got campervan socks (that is, socks with campervans on them) and a stubby holder from a Silverton photographer. We had dinner/drinks at Silverton Hotel last night, and the donkeys showed up for their dinner!