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Now we will leave Lake Mungo behind and board our bus for the next stage of our tour to Broken
Hill.
Out here the locals are used to hard work and hard conditions. Their skin has the weather-beaten look of well-tanned leather and an Akubra (type of wide brimmed hat not unlike the cowboy hats you see in old movies) is an almost permanent fixture on the heads of young and old, male and female alike. Out here houses have wide verandahs all the way around and the size of sheep and cattle stations can be counted in hundreds of thousands of square miles. There is lots to see and do here in Broken Hill and we will have our work cut out for us. However, after such a long bus ride through all that dust and heat, I think our first stop should be the local pub where we can partake of a great Aussie Beer or three, or a nice cool local white wine, then some good old fair dinkum Aussie tucker. After that we shall all go get a good night's sleep so we can go exploring all the sights and sounds in the morning!! Today we will head for the White Cliffs Opal fields. Opal mining is a major past time here and opals were first discovered here in 1889. Around 1898 a plesiosaur was found preserved in opal. Those of us brave or foolish enough can have a bit of a fossick or, as it is called out here, "go noodling" for opals. White Cliffs is very much an out back town. Very hot, dry and dusty and not much going on. It is like the ends of the earth. Even the vet flies in periodically and they also rely on the Royal Flying Doctor Service out here too. Of course White Cliffs is 180 miles from Broken Hill but as this is a virtual tour we can cover that distance and more in the blink of an eye. Like other opal fields here in Australia, a lot of the
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