Today we travel from Cobar to Broken Hill starting our day in mulga and cypress pine and finishing in the saltbush plains around the Barrier Ranges of Broken Hill.

We had visited Lilydale Rest Area before and saw how the hub cap collection was going.

Emmdale service station is the only sign of human habitation in 260km. The staff are mostly backpackers who learn how to make the local carrot cake then export the recipe around the world.

Recent rain produced a green carpet in places – this at Bulla Park

McCullochs Range is elevated above the mulga plains with its own distinctive vegetation – with rapid growth of wildflowers after the rains

Paper daisies

Happy in the solitude of the outback

View from McCullochs Range

The mulga were flowering

Mulga

Spiny cheeked honeyeater

Eremophila

The old Darling River bridge

Sad state of the Darling

Wilcannia was once the third busiest port in New South Wales and has some beautiful old stone buildings.

Police station

Abandoned buildings near the river

It was great to see a lot of positivity in Wilcannia on this visit – signs highlighting community and cultural work, a new cultural centre being built and workers busy in parks.

Netallie Hill outside Wilcannia

The view northwest towards Mutawintje.

Small daisies

Our best travel tip – take your own toilet paper. It is scarcer than water in the outback.

Did I mention that the flies were bad?

Dolo Rest Area – the debate raged about the missed-steak.

A magnificent emu – emu count today only 2 – scattered by the rain?

Plains near Little Topar

Lots and lots of goats – so many it was hard to pick the Greatest Of All Time.

In the Barrier Ranges west of Broken Hill, I had the feeling I was being watched.

Sunset at the Living Desert Park sculptures  – the grey skies promising a spectacular end to the day.

And we weren’t disappointed

After sunset glow on the sculptures

Broken Hill has a huge solar farm and a large number of wind turbines.

Bill Nighy is in town filming “Buckley’s Chance” – we happened to find one of the film sets by chance in our travels. I will leave you with a Bill Nighy quote – “When people warned me there would be long periods out of work if I became an actor, I couldn’t keep a straight face because that was exactly what I had in mind.”