Silverton on a Good Day

As you can probably guess, we decided to go back to Silverton for our ride that day. Menindee was also on our original list but because of things that happened, not least of of which was just pure laziness and relaxation time, we gave that one a miss. It's a 200km round trip to Menindee and we only had half a day left in Broken Hill. Silverton it was then!

The road to Silverton is much more interesting than anything that we'd ridden so far, there are a lot of dips along here, some of them are actual causeways, but a lot of them just seemed to be just natural waterways .. it's so flat out here that the water just goes anywhere when they get enough rain, so the road just had to follow the lay of the land. Some of those dips were even fun .. a lot of them were very rough and you kinda had to try to pick the best line through them without shaking your bike to pieces. And at least there were bends in this road.

We rode straight through Silverton when we got there, we wanted to go check out the Mundi Mundi plains on a sunny day ..

The view as we topped the last rise, the patch of dirt on the right is the lookout.

I have to apologise for the spots on these photos, as I said before I forgot all about the bugs that had hit us on the trip out and they stayed there for the duration.

We parked the bikes on the dirt car parking spot .. with all the large stones that you had to dodge I was pretty proud of myself for how I managed that. I was once told that a big trip on the bike can be the equivalent of 6 months riding practise, and this trip felt like that to me, I was doing things that only a couple of weeks ago would have freaked me out so much that I would have gotten off the bike and made Terry do it for me, not only did I have no choice a lot of the time, I also felt a lot more confident about doing things that I have found difficult in the past, like backing the bike in tough spots and riding on gravel. The driveway into the shed at the cottage was a huge challenge, but after the rain it meant that if I got it wrong both me and Roxy would be going for a swim .. so I did it!

Anyway back to the story at hand .. the lookout..

I cant decide which photos I like the most, so I'm gonna post them all.

Terry, hanging onto his bike just in case it gets any ideas into it's head to take off into the wild yonder.

The hills we'd just come over.

Terry took some photos too.

Couple of nice shots from him.

Then he got hold of my camera to take a panoramic shot.

Awe inspiring.

Then it was a quick ride back to town. Surprisingly we were both getting a bit hot by now, it was only about 23°C but in all the gear and out where there was no protection from the sun we were starting to feel thirsty.

So we parked the bikes then went on a mission to find refreshment.

We found the Silverton Pub, but I don't like going into strange pubs sometimes, and it was spilling out all sorts of people so I made us walk on. Unfortunately we missed something there, apparently it's full of Mad Max memorabilia .. like the VW out the front, that I've been told is from one of the films.

I really just wanted a coffee, and we'd been told the best coffee was up the top of the hill. We had to walk past the original churches to get to it.

Then we finally walked past the local art ...

and onto the cool veranda, where this sign was hanging .. an oldie but a goodie.

By the time we got inside even I was hot enough to forgo the hot coffee and opted for a cool drink instead, but I've had a hankering for a scone for the last couple of months and when I saw this on the menu I had to have one ..

It was the most delicious scone I've had in ages .. if not ever!

Now we were feeling fitter to go exploring .. there was a closer inspection of the Catholic Church that was the first church in Silverton.

Then we got to the bottom of the street and looked back ..

We came out next to the old Goal and it's now a museum .. oh we had to have a poke around in there. Old museums are often very fascinating to me and this one didn't disappoint us.

That's some sort of mining thingy out the front there. Inside it was cool and there were a lot of rooms full of history ..

This was the only room that was as it originally was .. that ball and chain looked serious.

There were a few courtyards that I imagine were exercise yards .. I don't know if the porcelain was always there though.

There were all kinds of interesting things tucked in corners too, I found this in one, I'm not sure exactly what it was but it seems to be something that would be worn in a mine.

Looks drastic to me, and speaking of drastic, I found the hairdressers ..

No kidding you use that on your hair .. it was for straightening Afro's originally, then it started to get used to curl hair as well ... it plugs in .. that just scared me!!

A list of the first fleet, Terry's family name is on there but we found out that it wasn't one of his relatives, his were on the second fleet. There's all sorts of interesting things listed on there.

There were a lot of the original buildings still being used here too ..

And others that haven't been used for a long time ... had to bring the bikes along for a photo shoot now.

And to pay me back for taking a pic of him taking a pic, Terry tried to catch me out.

We went into the little shop we'd parked in front of too, it sells the most amazing glass things, everything from earrings to large platters. Terry bought a napkin holder, I wasn't sure that it would make it home but the man wrapped it well and it is now safe on Terry's desk holding letters.

Then we went back to the cottage .. I have a video that I made up of the whole trip, it's a bit long but it shows a bit of the ride back from Silverton so I won't elaborate.



This is a pretty novice attempt at a video but I learnt heaps making it (it's why I took so long to post up about this trip) so I apologise again for the faults but hope you enjoy it anyway :)

And that was our trip to Broken Hill, it was fun and relaxing. We didn't get to see everything I'd planned for us to see but that's OK, now we have an excuse to go back. Which we will do sometime.

When I looked at the bikes the day after we got home they were covered in bugs, they both needed a good wash, and while I was washing I found that I'd lost a bolt in the new light bar. I had to replace that and while I was at it I replaced some bolts holding on my highway bar that I'd been meaning to replace for ages, they were rusting. The only thing left to do now is to polish up the chrome and get a proper replacement mirror for Terry's bike. It will come ... but before that I think that this weekend might just have perfect weather for riding :D