Do You Smell Something Burning?

Like any other mother or head of the household, Mother Nature likes to do some “spring cleaning” every now and again.  This time she chose summer here in Oz.  Being a woman, she is good at multi tasking, so she can take care of as much business as she can in a short amount of time.  While she turned up the heat this summer, she has also decided to add some light shows to remind us mere mortals who’s in charge.

The Australian summer is the peak season for bushfires, and are a natural phenomenon that occur all year round. When the mercury hits over 104°F (40° C), the heat ignites wildfires that spread extensively, engulfing farms, forests, homes, and wildlife sanctuaries.

So far this year, the states of New South Wales (the state we live in), Victoria, and Tasmania are really getting more than their fair share of fires. Gene and I live right in Sydney, so we are not in any danger, but the people who live out in the bush (that’s Aussie for the country) are having a tough time of it.

There are firefighters from all over Australia helping to fight these fires, but Mother Nature seems to be winning.

 

Like the fires out in California, there is really not much you can do if a fire is coming your way.

 

You can hope and pray that the firefighters can contain the fire before it gets to your home, but in a lot of the time, that is not the case.

So all you can do is watch your life literally go up in smoke.

 

They do all kinds of water bombing, which does help.

 

Most of the guys out there on the front lines are using  hoses, just trying to keep the whole thing contained.

 

Majority of the plants will regenerate themselves, but there is a major concern for the wildlife.

 

When firefighters do find animals, they help them any way they can.

This poor little guy is named Sam, and he is the spokes koala for the bushfires.  He was burned on all four paws, and his nose.  There are vets working around the clock to help all of the animals that are rescued. Sam is making a full recovery and has a new home at a wildlife sanctuary.

So, what happens now? Apparently Mother Nature got tired of the light show, so she had sent in rain to help put them all out. Most of the plants will regenerate themselves, so that process has already started.  It just  takes time.  Since there is no food source, all the animals have packed their bags, and moved to new homes.

This is some typical re-growth of eucalyptus trees 15 months after a bushfire. The smaller trees (thinner stem and twigs) have not survived the bushfire, while the larger trees (thicker stem and twigs) have survived. Because the small twigs in the crown of the tree have also been burned, the trees had to sprout at a different spot; this has resulted in massive re-sprouting along the base of the tree, instead of in the crown. The inset clearly shows this re-sprouting of the tree over the whole length of the stem.

This is a close-up of a eucalyptus tree that has already started it’s re-growth.  Seeing how this is the main diet of koalas, this is a pretty important plant in Oz.

After a few years there will be very little evidence left that there was ever a fire. Most areas that were burnt come back stronger and fuller than they originally were.

Word will get around to the animals (via the grapevine I’m sure) that all the restaurants are open again, and they will very happily move back into the old neighborhood. It’s like, grow it and they will come.  I guess Mom Nature knows what she’s doing.  If it’s one thing that I’ve learned, it’s always listen to your mother. She knows a thing or two.

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Silverton and South Australia We’re ready for our close-up Mr.DeMille….

And the adventure continues…..

Just outside of Broken Hill, there is another outback town, known as Silverton. It is sort of a Mecca for artists that use old cars, truck, and bicycles as their medium.

This is what I call the  Vegas jeep.  It’s covered with bling.

Here’s more proof  that this is Oz.  Seems Almira Gulch parked this here, and went looking for Toto.

They had these “works of art” placed all over this little town, but you have to give them credit, they used what they had to try to fix up the place.

See what dry desert air can do to ya?

Not quite the Herbie the love bug I remember.

The most popular type of vehicle that was used was the VW beetle. I have no idea what the significance of the beetle is, or why they used them. All I know is they had a bunch of them.

They even had a used car lot. It seemed that all two vehicles that were for sale had seen much better days. Now don’t get me wrong.  This tiny little town does have

more than just old cars.  (Not much more, but more.)

There is a Silverton hotel, and they do sell beer, so you do have somewhere to go to have a drink after taking in all the art and purchasing your new vehicle.

 

I did not go into the hotel, but when I asked for directions to the restroom, this is where I was sent.  Seeing how it was in use, I decided to wait until we came to the next town that had running water.

Now I am sure you are asking yourself, “Has Jay run out of things to write about?  Why is she showing us photos of some small hick town in the middle of the outback?”  Silverton is not just your average small hick town! It’s a famous town!  It’s so famous, that they even made a movie there!  For all you Mel Gibson fans, this is the place where the Mad Max movies were filmed.  Seeing how they are considered “guy films,” I haven’t seen them.

Max must have forgotten where he park his car. It’s been here since the movie was finished.

From the look of Max’s car, he must have been a real manly man.

 

I am guessing that they didn’t want to pay to have them hauled back to Hollywood, and besides, they  go with the decor of the town.

There was even a Mad Max version of a bug.  I have no idea why there are two emus driving this vehicle, but then again, why not.

Here’s Gene reliving one of his glory days…

Now I must explain why it was so important for Gene to show me this car from this movie that I have never seen, nor will ever see.  It seems that while Gene was living in Broken Hill, he was in charge of the roads in that area.  When the movie people came in, Gene had to work with them to make sure there were no regular cars around.  As a thank you to all the locals that helped with the movie, a picnic was thrown in their honor, and all the movie people (including actors) came to it.  Gene became close personal friends with Mel Gibson, and even had an in-depth conversation with him.  It was sort of like: Gene: “How ya going Mate?”  Mel: “Good thanks.”  Now keep in mind this was before Mel went off the deep end quite a few years later from women trouble.  So yes, Gene has had his brush with greatness, and he  would like everyone to know that he is available for autographs.

South Australia

We were very close to the South Australian border, so before heading back to Broken Hill, Gene decided to take me to the closest town in SA so I could say I have been there, but he didn’t say HOW small it was.

Must be another government job….

The whole town consisted of this one house that has sat unfinished since long before Gene lived in the area 30 years ago, 3 road signs, a pub (of course), a few other buildings, and a whole lotta outback. That was it. Period.

Here I am standing by one of their original road signs.  It dates way back , because the distances are listed in miles, and not kilometers.   (Australia used to use the same measurement system as America, but changed to the metric system in 1977)

Insert your own dirty joke here.  There are just too many of them for me to list here.

Here is the last sign. It sort of says it all doesn’t it?  All I can say is it must get reallly hot here during the summer, and I think it’s darn right neighborly that they let you know up front which parts of your body can get burned.  My question is, if this is a taste of the outback, why don’t they have sunscreen stands all over the place?

All in all, this was a good trip, and  I finally got to see the world-famous Australian Outback.  In a nutshell, it’s nothing but a HUGE desert, with not much to see but a whole lotta nothing.  If I have my way,  I’ll  spend my time on the white sandy beaches that are all over the place here in Australia. Besides, there aren’t’ as many VW bugs at the beach, and who knows, maybe I’ll even spot a roo taking a dip in the ocean one day. That will be the day I forget my camera.

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Broken Hill The Outback adventure continues…

Last time I wrote, we were headed for the world-famous Australian outback.  Well, here’s the second of the three in this series… (I’m still on the lookout for some outback roos.  Will I find some? Keep reading!)

After 2 days in the car, and one and a half of my knitting projects done, we finally pulled into Broken Hill. I had questions that were haunting me, and I wanted some answers.  Is there really a hill that was broken, and if so where was it?  Who broke it?  How long has it been broken?  Why hasn’t it been fixed after all this time?  (I’m guessing it’s a government job) If I climb to the top of this hill, will I be considered king of it?

To get all these answers, we headed off to the information building, and spoke with the information lady.  Seems she had answered these questions before, because she had all kinds of answers for me right away, without having to look up any of the information.

It seems that the original “broken hill” was actually a number of hills that appeared to have a break in them. These broken hills no longer exist, having been mined away. The city of Broken Hill known as the capital of the outback, and is Australia’s longest-lived mining city. It had a massive ore body, (which by the way, in true Aussie fashion, is shaped like a boomerang) and was formed about 1,800 million years ago. As it turned out, this ore body proved to be among the world’s largest silver-lead-zinc mineral deposits.

Even though the mine isn’t being worked anymore, all of the structures are still there.

This is what they call the line of load, and it’s nothing but the waste byproduct of mining.  The two structures on top are open to the public, and have a gift shop (of course), a cafe (naturally),  and a  memorial for all the miners that lost their lives.

The town is pretty big for being out in the middle of nowhere. Gene’s old office is the one story office building on the left with the big white roof.

Even though it’s the desert, they do have their own dam for their water supply.  There has been a ton of rain, so the lake is full.

Once you get out of the city limits, you are back to desert.  So here I am, in the Aussie outback. I finally made it.

Even though we were in the middle of the outback, Gene took me to the Menindee Lakes. Now keep in mind that Australia has some rather strange type of lakes.  Some of them will totally dry up and stay that way for years.  When the rains finally come, when it rains long enough, they will fill up, and be that way for quite a few years.

Here out in the middle of the outback is this beautiful lake.  It’s Huge! Not a Great Lake, but still pretty big.

You can tell where the old water line was by the ridge of trees that are still growing there.  We were there in winter, and the trees are dormant, so no green on the living trees.

The lake has a very sandy bottom with no rocks of any kind.  I’m sure this lake gets used a lot when it’s warmer.

One attraction that is around Broken Hill is the living desert sanctuary.  In 1993, artists from around the world came to Broken Hill, and made 12 sandstone sculptures that are supposed to tell a story.  Not being one that can read sandstone, for most of the sculptures   I couldn’t understand what story they were trying to tell.

Looks like a plain ol’ regular rock to me.

This one had some kind of carving on it, but a lot of it was worn away.

One good thing is they were close to each other.

This is it is supposed to be the sun and the moon, and  is considered the most famous of all these sculptures. This is the image they use on all the brochures about Broken Hill.

Here’s Gene reading about what I thought was just another sculpture.  It turned out to be a survey marker.  Leave it to a retired road and bridge engineer to find something like this out in the middle of nowhere.

Now this one I got!  Seeing how this is a horse’s head, I am positive that this is in honor of The Godfather…..

Next time we continue to see more of the outback, and get to check out a place that was immortalized in film!

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The Real Aussie Outback

Seeing how the outback makes up such a large part of Australia, I have decided to break this subject into 3 separate parts.  Our trip was only a week-long, and since the outback is so large, we only saw a very small part of it.  I am sure in the future we will be seeing more of it, so as expected, I will report on those trips also.

It had been a while since our last trip, so Gene and I decided that it was time to head out again and see what we could see. I had not really seen much of Australia outside of the Sydney area, so Gene decided to show me part of the outback.

Now I know what you’re thinking.  What’s so great about a steakhouse, and why would I want to see one. As a matter of fact, the first month I was here, we did go to one of these restaurants so I could see if it was the same as they are in America (They are, but the portions are a little smaller).  Gene was not speaking of this outback, of course, but instead of the REAL Aussie outback, which is part of the country.  About 30 years ago, Gene lived and worked in an outback town called Broken Hill, and he wanted to show me the town and part of the outback in the process.

Broken hill is the purple splotch on the map

Even though Australia is about the same size as the US, there is a lot of space that is not really used here. As you can see from the map, the majority of the major cities are on the coasts, and not many are in the middle of the country.  The reason for that is the middle is all desert, and not many people want to live there.

Since it is so huge, the outback covers several climate zones and experiences a wide range of temperatures. In the central deserts, it can get as high as 120°F in the summer, and drop to 15°F during the winter nights. In the central desert regions, they do get on average 8 to 10 inches of rain a year, usually in the summer months. The northern Australian Outback has a tropical monsoon climate, bringing lots of rain and high humidity in summer. When it rains it pours, and all outback areas can experience floods. So you can see, it’s not just your average desert.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  There are some towns in the desert, but not many.  Broken Hill is one of those towns, so that’s where we were headed.

With 3 knitting projects to keep me busy, we headed out of Sydney, and the first thing we had to do was cross the Great Dividing Range. (It’s circled on the map).  This is where the Blue Mountains and a lot of other mountains call home.

Very nice trees everywhere!

It’s a  nice drive with a lot of very nice scenery everywhere you look.

Once you cross this range, the land starts to change into what is known as “the bush,” or what we in America call, the country.

Not as many trees, and a lot more grasses.

More and more of nothing begins to show.

Pretty soon the bushes outnumber the trees.

There are some hills, but nothing like the mountain range.

Gradually, the land gets flatter and flatter, and larger plants seem to get fewer and fewer. This is what is known as the Outback. It is also a desert, so having lived in the Mohave Desert when I lived in Las Vegas, I was expecting a few things, like sand and cacti.  As you may be able to see from the photos, this desert has very sandy soil, but it is covered with grasses and small bushes.

The only cacti that I found were ones that people had planted in their yards.

There weren’t many at all even though they would thrive in this climate.

Nice Aloe Vera bush.

Even though the outback is a desert, some of the land is owned by private individuals, so there are some animals to look for, both wildlife, and domesticated.

There were a lot of cattle, goat, and sheep ranches all along the way, and the farther west we got, the fewer animals we spotted.

Seeing how steak is one of the favorite meals here, it made sense to see all those cattle.  I just thought it was funny how they all mooed with an Aussie accent.

There were herds of goats all over the place! This is where cashmere and mohair come from, along with goat’s milk. (No kidding!)

Merino Sheep

Seeing all those sheep was not a surprise either, because Oz is the world’s largest producer of wool, producing 21.5% of the world’s wool.

 

In Australia there are over 73 million sheep  that give up their coats for us, and that weights in at over 750 million pounds of wool each year. Talk about giving of yourself!  Not baaaaad.

In the way of wildlife, we saw a lot of emus. It is amazing that such a large bird cannot be seen that well even though there is not a lot of cover for them. The couple of times we stopped and I asked them to smile pretty for the camera, all I got was a look at their tail feathers.  Guess they are just camera-shy.

Emus are the largest birds native to Australia, and is second in size to it’s cousin the ostrich.

These are wild Emus looking for lunch.

We did see a lot of red foxes, but they were very quick, so I didn’t really get that many photos of them.  This one thought he would just sit there and watch to see what I was going to do before he decided to run off to find lunch.

Even thought there were signs all over the place, I am sorry to report that the only kangaroos we saw the whole trip were busy being lunch for the foxes and birds. (Personally, I think they put these signs  up just to pull a joke on the tourists.)  I found it rather interesting to see that the foxes had set up little barbies on the side of the road, and were drinking beer out of little coolers. Gene reminded me that after all, this was Aussie wildlife, and an Aussie does love his beer at a barbie.

Next time, we finally make it to Broken Hill. Watch this space.

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