Road Trip - Melbourne via Adelaide

Now that we are boat owners again, our plans for a lengthy road trip in Australia have been shortened somewhat. We are planning to bring the boat back to Australia from Malaysia in the July-October timeframe, but, haven't finalized dates yet. In the meantime, as we waited for our flight to Malaysia,  we had a few weeks available for a mini road trip. So, we left the Brisbane area with plans to do a loop west from Brisbane via Broken Hill, to Adelaide and then circle back along the south coast to Melbourne where we will leave the van.

First, we headed south along the coast to Port Macquarie, home of the renowned Port Mcquarie Koala Hospital. Most koalas simply pass through here, they are treated and then released. However, there are a few permanent residents that can never be released, like this koala, blinded by chlamydia. About 80% of all koalas are infected with chlamydia and yes it's the same variety that humans suffer from! Untreated in koalas, it has devastating consequences affecting the eyes and urogenital tract.

Koalas sleep most of the time and this enabled us to see them at very close range. When they're awake, they just munch on eucalyptus leaves and we saw them doing that too. Many of the koalas displayed in commercial operations are offered up to be held for photo-ops. None of that here, the koalas don't like being touched. It was enough just to observe these fascinating creatures.

After Port Macquarie, we headed inland, away from the coast. We were on a historic highway leading to the outback mining town of Broken Hill. This was going to be our first glimpse of the 'outback' and we were looking forward to a change of scene. The land started to level out and get drier. This was the view from our first inland campsite.

The next day, the land leveled out some more and became agricultural. We were surprised to see fields of cotton. They looked ready for harvesting.  It was a thrill to see small groups of very large emus just wandering along the field edges. 

Broken Hill was more sophisticated than we'd thought it was going to be. Reminders of an obviously wealthy past were present in some beautiful buildings still remaining.

The other side of a wealthy past was apparent at the somber and well-done miner's memorial, a monument to the horrific loss of life which brought wealth to the town.

Inside the memorial was a wall of memorial plaques. Each small plaque, decorated with a white rose, detailed a miner's death. There were many examples of extremely young men, dying horrible deaths.

Leaving Broken Hill, the land flattened out and now stretched endlessly far, far to the horizon.