Dirty Rotten Thief

Woke up this morning and Dave went up to the office to rebook us for another night, he opened his wallet to pay and found that all the money he had withdrawn from the bank yesterday (about $350) was missing - his wallet was clean empty, all his cards were still there but not a cent remained.

He came back to the van and on further inspection we discovered that my entire purse had been taken from my bag, thankfully I only had about $20 in it.  We had only left the van unattended (locked though) for a short time in the afternoon while we were all at the pool.

We reported the missing moneys to the office staff and they weren't shy in telling us that this isn't the first time that its happened, its a bit of a regular thing, the guy that does it is known to the police but as he only takes money isn't interested in jewellery, cameras or laptops they can't catch him with anything on him and so therefore he continues to get away with it.  Rumor has it he is Aboriginal and he does his thieving during the night - this makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable as my bag and Dave's wallet were right next to my head - can't believe he could have come in the van whilst we were sleeping, been so close to me and stolen our things, doesn't leave you with a nice feeling that's for sure.

The staff here have been helpful, the gentleman owner took a walk through the bush looking in the spots where he is known to dump purses, bags and jewellery but as we had so much rain last night in the big storm there is a lot of water in the creek and therefore he couldn't find it.

We spent the morning cancelling credit cards, sorting out money since we now had not a cent to our names and making police reports.  Everything today has been done with a heavy heart - its such a shame as in the 8 weeks we've spent on the road this is the first sign of trouble that we've seen or heard of.

Must say though we were very lucky in one sense that the laptop with 8 weeks worth of treasured photos wasn't touched.  Neither was my jewellery really the stuff that was taken is more inconvenience than anything else.

After finishing at the Police Station we headed back to the van for lunch.  Time for a feed and then out for some happier times.

We visited a couple of galleries - Andrea Blundell, she does these great emu and camel paintings.  We bought Tom a t-shirt with the emus on it- they are so cute and as you can see Tom is stoked with his shirt, he hasn't taken it off since!!

From there we visited the Pro Hart Gallery.  We took a wander round looking at the paintings.  To begin with I wasn't very impressed, just a lot of dark pictures and I guess I didn't really understand them and there was only the dragon fly one that I recognised from the TV commercials.

The gallery had lots of different rooms displaying his work and a his big pipe organ that he loved to play and his studio where he painted.

They had a video showing about Pro Hart, his life, his family and his work.  It was through watching this video that we began to be able to make sense of his art work.  The video told of how he worked in the mines and that he hated the work.  He used his artwork to make fun of his bosses and certain happenings around town.  To preserve the identity of the people he was painting about he would paint the faces as shields with cartoonish faces.  Some of the other pictures related to accidents, deaths and things that took place in the mines, to us initially these just looked like dark pictures but when put in context were actually deeply expressive pieces of art. I'm really glad we took the time to watch some of the movie it made the visit to the gallery so much more worthwhile.

From here we headed out to the Living Desert and Sculptures.  We were quite disappointed with these.  We had heard that they were fabulous and really impressive - perhaps it was our mood today or the hot temperatures, I'm not sure but really wouldn't be recommending them to anyone.

The living desert is made up of 12 sculptures that have been designed by artists from all over the world.  They were done during a sculpting symposium where the artists stayed - worked, and camped on site for a period of time until they were completed.  Apparently, the guy who decided the sculptures would be nice - Lawerance Peck had the idea and then asked the wedge tail eagle for guidance who told him to go ahead (really - I think that's a little strange???).  The Broken Bay Council payed for part of it and then they ran out of money and the towns people had to pay $7000 to have them completed.

Many of the etchings into the sandstone weren't overly clear and are fading rapidly with time.  The most impressive sculpture would have to have been this one, the rest were really nothing special.

It was a good place to admire the view over Broken Hill though.

As we were feeling all a little flat decided we'd head back to camp and just hang out at the van for the afternoon.  Dave took the kids to the pool and I chatted to some of our neighbours for a while.

We move on from here tomorrow (thank goodness, really would have liked to have gone earlier after the happenings of last night, not so keen about sleeping tonight and the thought that someone may come back in again looking for more money), 2 more sleeps and we'll be home!!!