Broke down in Broken Hill

Truck gone bung! Well, not quite. Our little Suzuki 4WD we’ve been towing behind the motor-home has had an injury. Depending on the damage (we’ll find out this arvo), we could be heading home a bit sooner. Either way I’ll be heading out this way again for sure.The country side here is amazing to look at and every town we’ve been to, except for poor old Wilcannia, is very tourist friendly. A lot of the small towns we’ve travelled through have made a fist of it (so to speak) and reinvented themselves with restored facades on the main street buildings, new businesses, cafes, shops etc and landscaping around the town.I can remember coming through some of these towns on family holidays as an impatient, weird little kid along with a very easily teased younger sister. The towns back then in the late seventies, were slowly dying and the young folk with their dreams and ambitions were leaving and moving to the cities where there was a better chance of a living.But now it’s changing and artists and entrepreneurs, travelers etc are returning and bringing life back to these little towns. The internet sure has helped and the new rollout of fibre optics around Australia is going to be amazing for these rural centres.The further west we’ve come, the redder the earth. But it’s contrasted with the intense green of fresh grass and scrub. There’s been a fair bit of rain out here lately and it looks like some of the grass and scrub is in shock. They’ve been brown for so long, they’ve forgotten what it’s like to be green. In some places there’s flat red earth, overlaid with a rich purple of metallic oxide in amongst deep green grasses, ashen grey mulga and snow gums. There’s the odd wattle and small native flowers scattered about but it’s still a bit early in the year for most of the flowers. It the rain keeps up, the west of NSW will look girly pretty around September and October.Maybe it’s because I’m getting older but the history of the area is far more interesting to me than what it was when I was a kid. Could be also the museums are better presented than when I was last here as well. There’s still the old dry facts hanging about, statistics, dates and so and so did this in dum, dum, dum. But there’s also a lot more emphasis in the museums on the characters, crimes and whacky events in the area as well.That’s it for the moment. I’m having a good time. There’s been no arguments or dramas and I’ve been enjoying listening to music on the iPod and staring at the countryside as we pass though it.Until next time - eat your greens, suck your reds and whittle your blues away.