"Is that an echidna by the side of the road?"

Kids hit the skate park this morning first thing.  They haven't skated for a while, a lot of the parks we've passed have been very small and they sort of lost interest.  This park was fairly colourful and looked interesting so they were pretty keen to check it out and give it a go.  I stayed behind at the van and since Dave skated too there are no photos, Dave had a stack so the fact that there is no photographic evidence is probably a good thing.

We went for a tour of the Royal Flying Doctor Service this morning.  Yez these guys are amazing and they offer such a fabulous much needed service for the people living in the remote parts of our country.  We saw the planes in the hanger - each plane costs $7 Million and virtually all their money comes through fund raising and donations.  Each trip that they make out to see someone costs $4000 - the service is free and available to anyone that needs it.

The tour consisted seeing the planes, a small museum and of a short movie - they showed some stories of the people that they have helped.  Life in remote outback is just so vastly different to what we take for granted in the City.  Its just so hard to even begin to comprehend. 

They interviewed a guy who had not many teeth left, he was visiting the dentist who only comes to his area once every couple of months (she brings everything with her even the chair).  The guy had had some bad tooth aches in between visits and dealt with the problem himself by removing the troublesome teeth - yep he pulled his own teeth out without anesthetic or anything.  Another example was a guy who had skin cancers he dealt with them himself too - he took a kitchen knife and anything he didn't like the look of he'd cut them out himself as visits from the specialists were few and far between.  There were many stories like this, they ask people to light a fire at the end of the run way (which by the way has to be on their property - approx 1 km is required) so that the pilot can judge wind speed and direction and they also ask that people drive their car up and down the run way a few times before the plane comes in to scare away any animals  that might be in the way.

I really enjoyed the tour and could rabbit on forever about the things that they do.  Having seen first hand just how remote a lot of our country is (and we've stayed relatively close to civilisation really) this service is so needed and very amazing.

We left from here and headed out to Silverton, 22 kms out of Broken Hill.  Silverton is a ghost town there is really nothing there except a few galleries and a pub.  The Mad Max movies were filmed out here in the Pub and surrounding areas.  There were a few other movies and TV ads that were filmed here over the years - Razorback, A town like Alice and others I can't remember.

This is one of the Mad Max cars.

On the way to Silverton Dave pulls the car over off the road quickly and says "I think I just found you your echidna!" I'll just diverge for a sec - on the way back from the Pinnacles at Cervantes we saw a sign warning us that echidnas could be on the road.  On the way back from the Pinnacles I saw one by the side of the road, I quickly called out.  Dave stopped the car, turned it around, drove back and we all hopped out very excited that we were going to see our first echidna in the wild - well it was an echidna but it was very dead and being consumed by magots and flies etc  Ever since then I've been looking and hoping to see a live one.  Sooooo today when he spotted what he thought was an echidna he pulled over, turned around and back we went looking for it.

This is what he saw....

a tuft of grass, still waiting to see my echnidna.

We spent a bit of time in Silverton, had lunch at the Silverton Tea House.  A very old stone building, a house that was built in the 1800s and still standing today and has been converted into a collectors museum and a restaurant.  The food served was real home style country cooking just like your  Grandma would make.  The lady served, cooked etc all on her own and was so friendly - the service was fantastic - just like being served by your Grandma. Very quaint! 

From here we headed out to Umberumberka - just had to find out what existed at a place with a name like that - well all that's out there is the Umberumberka Reservoir - in other words Broken Hill Dam.

There was an amazing amount of water in the dam given how dry the surrounding rivers were and that they expect only 225mm of rain a year.  We've had a couple of showers of rain since we've been here - they don't amount to much and the weather is so hot and dry that the rain is nearly dry before it hits the ground.

On the way back to Broken Hill we saw lots of emus and kangaroos by the side of the road.  A few emus chased the car for a bit - out in the paddock - it was fun to watch though.  But the best surprise of all came when we rounded a corner and this is what we saw by the side of the road - one on either side....

Very exciting, we had seen many signs when we were on the Nullarbor showing that camels were about but we didn't spot any.  We were constantly on the lookout though and then these 2 fellas were having a great feed of grass right by the side of the road! We watched them for a while, they weren't bothered by us, just kept on feeding.

Back to the van after that for the kids to have a swim and just generally hang around and relax.  Hoping for another night like last night - no midgies or mossies and the stars were amazing!! 

Late this afternoon we had a massive storm, you could see it coming the sky turned black and then the lightening and the thunder happened.  We had wind gusts of nearly 70kms per hour. 

The van had a bit of a wobble up as it was buffeted by the wind but it held up really well.  It didn't leak either and we had heaps of rain!!!  Tom being the smartest one in the family sought refuge in the toilet block and had his shower and waited out the worst of it whilst the rest of us hoped it would be over quickly, thankfully it cleared just as quickly as it came and its cooled everything down nicely.