Wednesday, May 27th, 2009, Bus Trip from Dubbo to Broken Hill
Bob: We were still a bit tired in the morning, so we decided to forgo a return trip to the zoo to see the meerkats' morning feeding and instead walk around Dubbo a bit and then take the bus to Broken Hill in the afternoon. Walking around Dubbo was fun as there were a lot of the old, turn of the century storefronts still visible. After checking in the Tourist Information center that the library offered Internet access, we headed that way to check in with our family. This was the first time, however, that a librarian has asked me what I wanted to use the Internet for before granting us access. Apparently if you want to use it for library-related purposes the Internet service was free but if you were going to use it to check on your email as we were, a fee was charged. I was surprised at that, but the fee was nominal so I paid for half an hour and signed on to quickly check our email. Then we listened to a city councilman by the name of Richard Mutton read "Pete the Sheep" to a bunch of squirming youngsters. He was quite a story teller and the kids' reaction to the story was (mostly) rapt attention. Even after all that we still got to the bus/train station in time to have the next legs of our bus/rail journey booked. |
Monika: The proprietor of the motel in Dubbo had offered to keep our suitcases, while we went on a three day excursion into the outback to Broken Hill. So we both packed our backpacks with the necessities for the next three days, left our rollies and headed off. The bus to Broken Hill did not leave until 2:10 so we had ample time to look at the city. We took the walk along the river and again marvelled at the different species of birds we saw. We stopped at a tourist information center and found out that the local library had internet service, so that's where we headed next. They indeed offered internet service for $5.50 an hour. So we payed 2.75, send a note to kith and kin that we were alive and well and I also checked our Apple FCU account to make sure everything was ok, since we had used the Apple ATM card. It turned out that the balance we got on our last withdrawal was correctly converted to Australian Dollars....the marvels of international banking. We were almost done with our internet when a group of kids started up singing a rousing chorus of "The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round", etc. We then found out that today was the all-Australian "Read Aloud" Day and a local council member was going to read about "Pete the Sheep". Groups of small kids had even brought in by bus (see above song) for this event, together with local mothers with their children. There were even two women with spinning wheels. Of course, we stuck around while Council member Richard Mutton read the book and thoroughly enjoyed it. We finally left this fine library, not waiting for the scones that were being served somewhat later. We decided to head for the train/bus station to get tickets for the Dubbo to Melbourne part of our trip (I had already reserved the Broken Hill to Dubbo). It always took a while to process the Backtrekker passes, so we tried to do our bookings while there were few customers in the local train office. |
Bob: Even when that was completed, we still had enough time before our 2:10 p.m. departure to purchase some meat pies from the local bakery and have lunch in the local park next to a rose garden. Some of the rose bushes were still blooming despite the lateness of the season, and it was very pleasant to stop and sniff them. The "used syringes" box in the park bathroom took me back a bit, I must say, but I later found out that it was part of a systematic program designed to stop the spread of AIDS among the local heroin addicts. I think it was the concrete evidence of intravenous drug use that startled me, particularly as the thought of injecingd an unknown concentration of an unknown purity of drug with an unknown set of contaminants straight into my bloodstream with a dirty needle just gives me the willies. I mean, what could go wrong? (let me count the ways!) After lunch it was time to board the bus to Broken Hill some 750 kilometers West in the Australian Outback, and what a journey that turned out to be. |
Monika: By now it was lunchtime. We had seen a bakery across the train tracks that boasted award winning meat pies. Now Neville had introduced us to meat pies earlier and they may not be low fat, but they are Goooood - think of pot pies, only with no potatoes or vegetable, only minced meat inside. The bakery had a travel pack of four meat pies for $11, (By the way, Australians don;'t have Pennies, so if anything is advertised as $10.99 you may assume that you have to pay $11 without getting change back). We headed over to a park across from the train station to consume our meat pies. There were flocks of cockatoos all around us together with some black and white crow type birds and of course the ever-present Ibis. This was a war memorial park, with the ANZAC memorial on one side, a rose garden and kids playground on the other and picnic benches in between. Even nice bathrooms on one side. -- Public bathrooms in general in Australia are well kept. You may just be surprised to find containers to dispose syringes. We walked a little more through downtown Dubbo. It is a rather vibrant downtown with only a few empty storefronts. We stopped at a Woolworth, which in Australia is a rather large food chain, and bought some food for the trip. We finally ended up at the train/bus station. Between 1 and 2 there is a lot going on at the station. The train from Sydney was coming in and busses from several rural bus lines were also arriving. Then the train left again and the different buses also started back on their routes. Our bus left around 2:15 and I settled down to a 11 hour bus trip. |
Bob: Our bus drive into the outback was surreal. We started out normally enough shortly after 2:00 p.m. from Dubbo, and headed due West past farms and small towns. Once past Nyngan, however, the two-lane highway was became arrow-straight and remained that way for the next five or six hundred kilometers. Some emus beside the road stared at us as we went past as if to say, "there's nothing much out that way, mate!", but we continued on undaunted. Except for a very occasional light swale or dry wash, the land was absolutely as flat as a pancake so we drove on a beeline for Broken Hill uninterrupted by hills, curves, or any other changes in the road. The landscape changed in that the trees gradually decreased in height as the land became drier and then finally disappeared all together about the time it became dark. A bat flew into the top of the windscreen with a loud "whack", and that startled all four of us who comprised the entire complement of the bus by that time: the driver, Monika and I, and a little old lady from Broken Hill. We three passengers had gathered in the seats immediately behind the driver so that we could all converse as our long drive continued into the night. Boring steadily on into an ink-black tunnel at a constant 100 kilometers per hour was mesmerizing. The driver had to constantly keep a vigilant eye out, not for any changes in the road, as there were none, but for kangaroos feeding beside the road that would try to hop in front of us. He said the high beam headlights seemed to startle them into jumping, so he used the strategy of dimming to low beams when he saw one poised at the side of the road so that it could see well enough to hop out of our way. He was a pro-kangaroo Australian, by the way, because I have talked to Australians who are both pro- and anti-kangaroo. A chap on the train out to Lithgow said that his bus driver had been a "Damn-the-roos, full speed ahead!" kind of guy. As it turned out, we managed to miss all the roos on our way to Broken Hill although I think we brushed the tail of one as he bounded across in front of us. Our driver mentioned that the pasture lands in the Outback are mostly unfenced, and that explained why we were surprised at one point by a very large brown cow who unexpectedly ambled directly into the street in front of us. I felt the rear wheels lock up and skid a bit as our driver maneuvered around to avoid the cow, and I can now tell you from direct experience that emergency braking in a 20 ton vehicle really gets your adrenalin pumping! Our driver mentioned that if he really hit the brakes anything not belted in would come hurtling down to the front of the bus and that would of course include unbelted children, but convincing Australians to fasten the seat belts was a very hard sell. From our driver's point of view, his efforts to dodge the roos were successful as he said the typical toll of a night's drive is collisions with an average of two roos. The bus, however, was equipped with a huge, sturdy external framework of chromed steel tubes out front, and those effectively acted as "roo catchers" just like the cow catchers on the front of the old steam locomotives in the days of the American West. So we arrived in Broken Hill safely after a curious, one might almost say bizarre, night ride in which we were shaken but not stirred. |
Monika: . We had seats right up front and it was really fun watching the traffic and scenery change. Our first few stops were in smaller and smaller towns. The scenery went from large cattle places with nice fences and even grain fields to basically scrub with trees that got smaller and smaller. After our dinner break it had gotten dark. There were only three passengers left on the bus and we all crowded in the front. I was going to take a nap, but believe you me, driving into the dark Outback was more exciting than I had expected. You might have thought it was lifeless, but then you saw kangaroos sitting on the side of the road. Some were smart and hopped away from the road, most of them just stared at us, but a few tried to get across right in front of us. Our driver tried to avoid all them, one we almost brushed, but I think it got away, some of the others he discouraged by turning on the low lights. Suddenly a rather large brown cow ambled across the street, no fences in this part of Australia, our driver put on his brakes and managed to avoid it. It really was four hours with hardly a dull moment. Our driver let us off across the street from our motel, we signed in and soon were in a rather cold room. I looked around for a heater but could not find one. I was reminded of Ellen's story of the rural motel in West Virginia: "You didn't say you wanted heat, those rooms are 5 dollars more." (In the morning I did find the heater and for the rest of our stay we were nice and warm.) But I was still surprised at the differences in temperature between sun-up no wind and no sun and wind. If you come to the Outback in May or June bring warm clothes that you can layer. |
| Index |
| Prolog | Map of Australian Walkabout | Epilog |
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