Road Trip Part 2
5500km more on the odometer
March 27, 2018We hadn't really looked at a map beforehand for the next leg, and so headed back to Canberra for a night before the very long day of driving to Broken Hill to visit Anthony's astronomy friend Trevor and his wife Cheryl. In hindsight we should have gone directly from Guthega to Wagga via the Snowy Mountains Hwy, which would have been a pretty drive and would have taken over 2 hours off the drive the next day. Live and learn.
We stayed at Trev's 3 days (I'm sensing a theme here!) and Anthony helped him fix some problems with his telescope. I've been to Broken Hill quite a few times and have seen most of the attractions so I went looking for rocks I could bring back to lapidary club to cut and play with. I found them at a shop in the main street and now that I'm home I've started working on them (my first results in the photo above).
As a photography exercise I also went to the pacing one night. Unfortunately the best vantage point was at the darkest corner of the field and my camera struggled. Still, it was fun to try.
Then it was time to head home. We drove to Cunnamulla and overnight there looked at the road closures in Queensland. Our original plan had been to take the shortest route, via Jericho (east of Barcaldine) which we'd never done before, but all the rain western Qld had in February was still affecting the roads. After looking at all the closures and roadworks we decided to turn east at Charleville instead and come home the usual route from Roma.
It was a great trip, but at least a week too short to have done it properly. We now know better and have already started thinking about how to improve it when we repeat it next year.