Our next destination – the opal mining town of White Cliffs was only a couple of hours drive away so we decided to spend a good part of the day in Broken Hill visiting those places that strangely stayed shut on Monday and Tuesday, beginning with The Silly Goat Café, which had been recommended by more than one Broken Hill native/adventurer prior to our travels.
A hipster café that wouldn’t have been out of place in Newtown, Newcastle or a local shopping strip [ in north Canberra, The Silly Goat sold cold pressed bottled juices, offered a fancy menu of strange creations – not a basic eggs and bacon in sight – and took its coffee seriously. Fortunately for Dan, unlike the hipster cafes at home, the Silly Goat still offered diet Coke. I ordered mushrooms with cashew truffle cream cheese, polenta chips, crispy fried onions, egg and sourdough. The mix of flavours was delicious but very strong, so it was a bit of a struggle to finish. Dan chose the bacon benedict but didn’t read the fine print the sweet potato waffle and curry hollandaise weren’t quite the accompaniments he was expecting, the coffee was good but I have access to some of the best in the country at home so it didn’t seem amazing. I also added a black lemonade – it too was very strong and quite bitter.
After breakfast we headed towards the Sufi bakery up the street which had been closed for our entire visit so far. For people who had just had a rather large breakfast we spent up big at the bakery. We didn’t come across any particularly unusual breads, which is what we had expected, but we did pick up some pizza scrolls and some nice rolls with the idea of having a bit of a picnic lunch. That plan necessitated a stop at Coles for ham, cheese, lettuce and mayo. I also took the opportunity to pick up my own personal bargain – I am not usually a fan of buying bottled water – most of what comes out of taps in Australia is perfectly drinkable, so I don’t see the point. I also object to paying $2.50 for 500ml of water no matter what spring it comes from. You can get a 2-litre bottle of Coles brand water for 90 cents. This turned out to be an awesome decision.
Given I hadn’t had the chance to have a milkshake at Bell’s Milk Bar, I requested a last pit stop for a takeaway before we left Broken Hill. We timed our visit for the perfect photo opportunity, with 50s Chevrolets arriving one after another to angle park in front of the restored milk bar just as I imagine they would have done 65 years ago. This intrigued us. There was a camera crew too – what were they filming – was it a tourism ad? I went in and tried not to get in the way of their setup, perusing the merch rack while I waited for my caramel milkshake to be made. I spied a t-shirt with a very retro looking print of a Bell’s Milk bar ad – navy blue on sky blue t-shirt so I purchased it. How much room is one more t-shirt going to take up? As I was waiting, I listened intently to the discussions about filming and then I spied the bright yellow envelopes. This was an ad of sorts – they were filming an episode of The Amazing Race. It makes total sense – the borders are closed. Why wouldn’t you film Amazing Race within Australia (at least those bits of Australia you can get to without two weeks of quarantine. Bet they aren’t filming in Melbourne. It also allows them to sell the show to the rest of the world. And when things open back up it will drive tourism. Who doesn’t want to see the draws of visiting Australia? I will be interested to see what the segments here do for tourism in Broken Hill. Not that it hasn’t already become the place to go in NSW (so you can avoid all those inner-city Sydneysiders and international celebs who have descended on Byron Bay, determined to wait out the pandemic by the beach.
Given we had some time to spare, we decided to head back out through Menindee Lakes to see if we could find water in one of the other lakes in the system. We drove North East from where we had landed two days before on what was purported to be a sealed road. It wasn’t. We drove for quite some time until google suggested the lake was within a few metres of the road. Then we thought we saw something through the trees. We found some unfenced road and some tracks where we could drive a few hundred metres closer to the trees. We got out of the car and decided to go a bit closer through the scrub on foot – eventually we emerged from the scrub to find water almost lapping at our shoes. The picture we expected was there before us – a shallow lake with dead trees poking out like twisted and gnarled flood markers. What we were led to believe from the 100s of photos and docos is that the lake would be teeming with bird life. We didn’t see evidence of that. There were flies and other kinds of bugs though so if the birds did decide to drop by, they wouldn’t starve. Back on the never-ending dirt road we spied an emu Dad with babies. It is one of the fascinating things about emus is that the male emu sits on the nest and looks after the chicks.
We continued north towards the main highway from Broken Hill to Sydney, which we then promptly crossed and drove into the little town of Wilcannia. There was a lot of restoration work going on in the town made famous (in my consciousness anyway) for indigenous hip hop outfit Wilcannia Mob. We had a look under the bridge for another E.L.K work but alas we didn’t manage to find it. If it was where it looks like it might have been – kudos to Luke – I would definitely break my neck getting down, there. [Dan’s song – Frank Turner – I was a latecomer to Frank Turner. One of my friends had been talking about him for years but it wasn’t until he ended up on a bill with the Dropkick Murphys that I finally went out and purchased two of his albums to listen to on the five hour road trip to the show. I (and my travelling companions) were hooked before we got to the show and blown away during the performance. The Dropkick Murphys were pretty awesome too (but we were already expecting that).]
As we drove north towards White Cliffs, the weather began to set in, and it felt like we were transported – the eerie quiet and the treeless landscape were what I imagine a walk through the Scottish moors would look like. I finally got to see what I think was a red kangaroo -0 although this one was dead on the side of the road. We also saw a very large male emu running along the side of the (unfenced) road. Eventually Google maps brought us to the place listed as White Cliffs Underground Motel on the map. Just one problem – it looked like a farmhouse rather than a mining town, there were also signs up suggesting beyond the gate was private property. We had seen but not read another sign and decided to circle back, it proclaimed this was not White Cliffs. There was also no signal out here, so we decided to just keep driving up the road a bit further. By now the rain had started to fall. Eventually we made it to the main marker of any opal mining town. Well, any outback town really – the pub and the general store. Reality TV treatment in Opal hunters aside, opal mining towns are an enigma, a place for the misfits and characters of the world to congregate and seek their fortune. While all other forms of mining have become modernised, mechanised and automated, opal mining has remained a manual operation, with individual claims that are worked morning and night, some with broken down equipment.
If you’ve never visited an opal mining town, I urge you to do it. White Cliffs was my second, having visited Lightning Ridge twice before. Country towns Are already filled with some of the most interesting characters but this goes to the next level in opal mining towns which are a melting pot of those seeking their fortune and those that find life in bigger places with more temptations that leads them into trouble. For some it is the thrill of the hunt and for others the solitary life of a mining lease where you can choose how to mine and how to live has its own appeal. In the mioddel of Sydney or Melbourne the semi-permanent dwellings would be deemed a hoarders den. Out here they just show ingenuity.
Our main reason for heading here (apart from interest in another opal town – was to stay at the underground motel. Like the more famous Coober Pedy, many dwellings here are built partially underground to escape the summer heat. The rock formations that give the town its name and provide the opal, are stable enough to be used as dwellings. And usually conveniently hollowed out into a series of caves or rooms in the search for opal. The underground motel was just such a place – the front reception, dining rooms and amenities were all built in aboveground areas of the hotel which meant shared shower and toilet facilities. The rooms were dug into the rock face, making them cool – a constant temperature of around 18-20 degrees while the temperature outside was closer to 40 degrees. Our room was basic with furniture that looked like it came from grandma’s garage sale but it was quite large. And cool. A bit hungry by now, we brought out the bread and deli items we had bought in Broken Hill (that fridge in the car comes in handy) and had a late lunch. The hotel offered a pretty basic menu which didn’t look that inviting.
After a bit of a rest, we decided to head back into the main part pf town, which essentially consisted of the pub and general store, and have a look around. Feeling that the pub might be the best dining option in town we decided to grab a beer before we explored. We asked the barman, who looked like he probably walked off his own mining lease, what time the kitchen would open. His response – he usually turns the grill on around 6pm. Food for thought while weighing up our dining options.
We had picked up a guide map when we arrived but many of the organised activities such as mine tours or gift shops were either nort functioning or had closed for the day so we took a drive around the main mining lease area and through the other parts of town – It was mostly underground save for the pub, store and old caravans and buses on the mining sites. American TV shows and movies would have you believe that trailer parks and bush sites like this were littered with stylish airstream caravans with quirky accessories such as road signs. The quirky accessories were certainly abundant but the trailers were a bit more rustic and ramshackle. Our adventure took us on the local heritage trail which included a drive through the fossicking site and active claims, past the variety of dugouts, most of which had some portion externally positioned for light. The other feature of this town in the middle of nowhere is a solar array built by ANU as a research project in the 1981, the parabolic array provided off grid power to the town and is actually believed to be the first solar power station. The power Station was connected to the grid in the 90s and decommissioned in the 2000s, its technology and capability now superceded.
It was starting to get dark and the weather was beginning to close in with what looked like a storn brewing to the west. Because we were in town, we decided to give the pub menu a go. The menu itself wasn’t much different to the hotel menu, featuring basic pub grub such as steaks, but we decided it would be more interesting to be amongst the locals at the pub than the other tourists at the hotel. We both chose the porterhouse steaks, chips and salad, figuring that everything on the plate except the salad would likely be edible. They were much more than that – possibly some of the best steaks we had eaten and the salad was pretty good too. Used to city pub meals which often come with a few limp pieces of dressing, tomato and cucumber and no dressing, this was old school – granted some of it came from a can but it had a great dressing and was accompanied by homemade pasta salad that was delicious. There were also homemade sauces – I chose gravy and Dan pepper sauce – and those were pretty spectacular too. Just shows that you shouldn’t judge a restaurant by its locale. If you ever find yourself in white cliffs, be sure to visit the pub. There were a few locals in that night as the state of origin was on. They had a projector screen hooked up and the beer was flowing. About half the crowd were intently watching and the rest were accommodating. It didn’t give us much chance to chat to the locals though. However as people watching went it was informative especially the bloke who sat down armed with a bottle of bourbon pouring bourbon and cokes with a much higher ratio pf bourbon than coke. But yet still with coke. [Rain on Tin – Sonic Youth – Despite the fact I have listened to them for years, my most enduring memory of Sonic Youth remains lying on the grass at Summersault festival on New year’s eve 1995, recovering from skanking to my first ever Rancid set. It was the perfect way to enjoy their psychedelic brand of grunge.]
As the weather rolled in, we noticed lightning strikes in the distance so decided to head back up the hill amongst the ramshackle opal claims. We parked just off the road at the lookout at the top of the hill and Dan set up his tripod and timelapse equipment. It was raining fairly heavily by then so I stayed in the car leaning out to take random photographs or just snapping through the windscreen. It was a pretty spectacular storm and a great place to view it. After a while, we decided to pack it in and head back to the hotel. The combination of the day’s heat followed by the storm had unfortunately made the well lit amenities area of the hotel a haven for bugs which was a bit annoying but the barrier between there and the underground rooms meant they didn’t venture below. And with no wifi or phone service, a constant temperature and no windows (and therefore no sun to wake us) we enjoyed a restful night’s sleep.
