TUESDAY 2 JULY     BROKEN HILL

As I was having my breakfast outside under the awning, a departing caravan went past, with a horrible noise coming from a wheel. People were yelling at the driver to stop – he must not have realized the screeching racket was coming from his rig. The wheel was very wobbly. A couple of the wheel studs had sheared right off. He said he’d had a tyre repaired, on that wheel, a day or two before he even got to Broken Hill. He said the tyre place had used a rattle gun and must have over-tightened the nuts.

It was quite scary to think that he’d probably been doing a fair speed on the highway, with a wheel like that – because the missing studs were nowhere to be found on the site he’d occupied. He set off again – very slowly – to limp around town to see if he could somehow get it fixed.

We got going about 11am. Drove to daughter’s office and I went in and collected the glasses. I thanked her, politely, refused to engage in any discussion, and left.

I wanted to drive out to The Pinnacles, about 20kms SW of town, to see them closer up. The road was unsealed, but quite good to drive on. The first venture of Terios “off road”.

Closer up, they looked really interesting, so I was looking forward to some walking and exploring there. Then we came to a locked gate with No Entry on, and were passed by a mining type truck that had come through it.

I took some photos from a greater distance than I’d hoped, and we turned back.

Subsequent research, which I hadn’t thought to do before hand, indicated that there was mining for silver, lead and zinc at The Pinnacles, for a hundred years, from the 1880’s. It seemed the closed mine was now re-opened.

After that anti-climax, drove back to town, to the Perilya Twin Lakes Park again, to give dog a good walk.

Being a week day, the adjacent Perilya Mine was working and of interest to the male of the establishment. I preferred the park without the background noise and dust.

With our tourist venture for the day completed, John decided he could fit in a game of bowls, so it was a quick change for him at Bus, and to the bowls club. I kept Terios, in order to do some shopping, then had computer time and walked dog again.

I bought a sink plunger to try to unblock the grey water tank, which had not received any attention since Gol Gol. As a plumber, I was a definite failure. It didn’t occur to me that there was an outlet from the shower, too, into the tank – and it was lower than the sink. The shower base was being used to store things like shoes and dog food. All I gained from the plunger exercise was a big, unpleasant, clean up job of the shower and its contents, after my efforts  caused some of the grey water tank contents to take the line of least resistance.

I collected John from bowls, where he’d had an enjoyable afternoon that took his mind off personal issues. He was less than impressed with my DIY plumbing effort, but did concede there was definitely a problem. I thought we’d established that days ago!

I made tea of ham steaks, pineapple, potato wedges, eggs.

After tea watched an interesting episode of a TV program called Kitchen Cabinet – personal encounters with various politicians on their home turf.