Silver City Highway

We have just travelled from the northern New South Wales border with Queensland to the southern New South Wales border with Victoria, almost in a straight line (looking at the map).   683 km, which is not far in terms of the size of Australia but a reasonable distance non the less.

Silver City Highway is 683 km long.   And it is all sealed.   

The northern part contains the small town of Tibooburra with the small city of Broken Hill in the centre, and in the southern part there is a settlement called Curlwaa, which is where we are now staying in the camping ground.   There is a town a bit further back on the highway, called Wentworth.

There is one roadhouse north of Broken Hill, called Packsaddle, and one roadhouse south of Broken Hill, called Pomona Roadhouse (now closed).

There are properties along the way, as seen by the entrances, plus a few roads leading off elsewhere.    But mostly there are dry creek beds, sand, scrub and stones plus patches of bush.   Desolate countryside.

However the bitumen road was brilliant, which we, and all the other people travelling north appreciate.

As I drove I kept thinking about Charles Sturt, in 1845, leading his party of 15 men, 200 sheep,11 horses, 32 bullocks, 7 carts plus a 22 ft sailing boat and 2 sailors to sail it.  The whole journey took 19 months and covered 3500 miles.   They left from Adelaide.   

And to think we scoot along in our vehicles on a sealed road to cover the 683 km in seven hours of driving (plus stops of course)

Amazing explorers.   

There was plenty of wildlife, and sadly quite a few dead kangaroos on the side of the road.  

The emus are more savvy with traffic although we did stop a few times when we saw an emu standing on the road, but as soon as we came close it sped off.   They are very fast.

There is a deserted settlement 40 kms south of Tibooburra, called Milparinka.   I should rephrase this, as it is no longer deserted, the restoration of the buildings is quite amazing.   Plus a couple of new buildings to house museum pieces and information about the town.   The pub is still open and there is a camping ground.   

We did not realise any of this until we stopped at the settlement and went into the old courthouse, where we were given a cup of coffee from one of the volunteers.   Apparently volunteers, from different parts of Australia, come and spend two weeks here, to help with restoration work and act as tour guides.

They charge $8 per person to look through the buildings and displays.   Although we paid our entrance fee we could not stay as we needed to get to Broken Hill in order to see a locksmith.  

Packsaddle Roadhouse, the best maintained roadhouse we have seen.   Also the gardens were lovely and there was a large green lawn, which Piper appreciated very mu

Sadly this roadhouse was closed, Pomona Roadhouse.    The note on the door explained that it closed due to Covid, no doubt there were no customers, due to travel restrictions in NSW and Victoria.    

We left Broken Hill, and forgot to fill up with diesel, and thought we could do so at Pomona Roadhouse.   Luckily Walter checked online and found it was closed, so we returned to Broken Hill in order to find a petrol station.   We had only travelled 20 km when he checked.   It is so important to make sure that you top up your fuel at every stop, as you do not know if there are roadhouses with fuel ahead    It was 266 km between Broken Hill and Wentworth.

I forgot to add a bit more information about Tibooburra, as there is more there other than a camping ground and two hotels.   There is a roadhouse, grocery store/cafe, SES station, a huge compound for roadworks, a child care centre, and a big School of the Air school which also caters for local children.

It is, in fact, quite a busy place.

Finally, the reason why we needed a locksmith, was due to the handle on the bed extension came away in Walter's hands once we put it up, and locked it.   Luckily it was up and locked otherwise we would not have been going anywhere.   

The locksmith in Broken Hill was brilliant.   He took the lock apart and fixed it and only charged $50.   Brilliant person.