The Purple Penguin

(K: I wanted to call this The Dish, but Joe said no.)

Because Joe wanted to start . . . The second day of our road trip and we went via Parkes famous for its Elvis Festival. And a dish. Now when I say dish I do not mean the more than we could eat breakfast we had at the Roasted Kombi cafe, I mean the radio telescope used to relay the TV pictures during the first moon landing in 1969. And they made a film about that called The Dish.

The Observatory is still an active part of CSIRO’s Australia Telescope National Facility. So you can’t go and see the telescope itself, but there is a small visitor’s centre about the work they are doing and the work with NASA including with the Apollo programme (they didn’t just do Apollo 11). (K: all this was very nifty! And you could go out and get a good look at the dish, as well as information about it and a look inside an old focus cabin.) (K: oh and we took lots and lots of photos)

From Parkes we started our route to Broken Hill with the full expectation of stopping at some of the small wildlife areas and looking for Australian critters. However, the first one we pulled into had a sign saying ‘closed due to the weather’ as did the second one we looked at. The next one we didn’t even turn as the main sign on the road told us it was closed. So the only critters we saw were the dead ones at the side of the road. It was far too hot for any to be out during the day.

We did see quite a few birds, including a lot of galahs around Parkes, but mainly we saw the Christmas art of the outback farmsteads. These involved sometimes humorous things, mostly wrapped in tinsel, at the end of their driveways. Some examples included: a stack of three tyres in a pyramid, painted green with tinsel hanging on; Father Christmas mannequin in an old beat-up junked car, pulled by metal kangaroos; green painted tractor tyres with tinsel; an old shed with a Father Christmas mannequin, though this one seemed a bit drunk and in his bathrobe; and pretty much anything you could wrap tinsel around.

The scenery did change from thickish trees to red brush. Lots of farms and a train line that stopped at the farm depots. We followed one train line with lemons or potatoes heaped alongside every so often – not sure if the train would have had anything left on it! We went through many towns and it changed from mainly farming to, by the time we got to Cobar, mining.

Just before we stopped in Cobar, Kathleen took us to the viewpoint. It was a mine. (K: Joe said not to go, but it was a brown sign and looked close so I took the turn. Each road I turned down got smaller and Joe was looking worried, but I carried on. There was a short walk to what looked like a shipping container with the walls cut open, a metal walkway covered in fencing attached to it, out over the mine. In the end, Joe said it was worth it.)

Spending the night in Cobar at the motel and decided to have dinner at the motel. Ended up mingling with the locals having their Christmas get together dinners! Pretty sure we were the only non-locals in there! When we checked in we got a map to a turtle pond that we’ll probably check out tomorrow. On the way to Broken Hill tomorrow, but probably still won’t see much as it’s forecast to be 44C!