22 June 2026 – 0 kms – Broken Hill
Wiljakali Country
The woman peers at me from behind her glasses, unblinking and unsmiling. She is late 50s and the most sour and dour person I’ve met in a loooong time. She seems like she should be an old school librarian shushing unruly patrons instead of someone behind the information centre desk welcoming people to her town.
She’s been kinda nasty since I first came up to her and bought a postcard to send to my old cycling friend Don. She got a bit more nasty when I asked if there was a guide to the historical buildings I could purchase. (No, but here’s a driving tour brochure for free, said with hard eyes and a tone that says she’s tired of saying this 50 times a day.)
She is also giving out incorrect information.
I know from the council road reports that the one road to Mutawintji National Park still has a section closed to all vehicles. I also know the other road, Waterbag Road, is listed as “Open with caution: 4WD vehicles only”. She tells me the 2WD road to the park is open.
When I say, “Oh, that’s good, when did that change? I thought it still said closed on the road report this morning,” she sighs and pulls it up on her computer. She hesitates. I can see that she sees that it’s still closed. But instead she says to me, “No, that was just the section from the station to the park.”
I don’t argue. You don’t do that with someone you need information from that is beaming daggers at you.
I say, “Well, would you know the condition of the Waterbag Road and what people might have been reporting about it? I am wanting to ride my pushbike out there, so I need a really good idea of what it’s like.”
She says, flatly, and in a way that says she is not interested in providing further information, “The road in the national park is paved.”
She thinks I want to ride my bike IN the national park not TO the national park. And, yes, as I find later, there is a section of deteriorating sealed road in the park, but much of the road is really rough gravel. I just say, “Ok, thanks for that” and take my leave. I sure hope we can get better info elsewhere. It’s 130 kms out there, so not something I’m taking lightly. I think it would be terribly embarrassing to get stuck and need to call for help.
Earlier in the day, I got up early in the bright, 2C sunshine and trekked over to the supermarket and got all my resupply food. Then I tackled the rear tyre. Yep, there was a teeny thorn in there. I took the bike over to the BBQ area by the pool and worked on that for about an hour. Again, in the cold air, the rubber was stubborn and hard, and it took me 45 minutes to massage it enough to get a lever under the bead. But we’re all good again now. I took the time to clean the drivetrain, too.
Now that we’ve struck out at the info centre, I go down to a little park in the city centre. It kinda has the feel of the park in my parent’s town where the farmer’s market is held, just bigger and with a rotunda surrounded by rose bushes. I find a table in the sun and ring my parents. I’m overdue to speak to them.
By the time I’ve finished chatting to my parents, the sun has gone and it’s kinda chilly. Let’s see what information we can glean from the bike shop. I put a new tube (I carry two) in the rear tyre this morning. I’d rather replace the punctured tube than fix it, because I’ve had enough of that fiddly valve.
The woman at the bike shop has to go out the back and ask her husband if they have the tube size I need – again, none of the puncture resistant ones at the front of the shop come in that size. Thankfully, they do have the size I need back there.
I ask her if she knows anything about riding out to the national park. Her eyes get big for a moment. She says, “Well, no. I haven’t been out there since I was a kid and can’t even remember what it looks like.”
She does confirm that there are just thorns everywhere out here. She says, “you get them just riding down the street!” (I end up picking up about six 3-corner jacks in my shoes, just walking around town on footpaths in two days!)
I thought she might have had some cyclists coming through that had spoken about riding out to Mutawintji. I think they get a decent number of bike tourers out here that ride the Barrier Highway from Adelaide to Sydney. I’ve read several internet blogs over the years of people doing that. I guess no one detours from the highway – or the type of cyclist that does that sort of tour doesn’t have the right type of bike to go far off the chipseal?
So strike two for trying to supplement the digital information I’ve found with some old school analogue, in-person data.
I have a look around town as I do my chores.
The City of Broken Hill has outstanding significance to the nation for its role in creating enormous wealth; for its long, enduring and continuing mining operations; and the community’s deep and shared connection with Broken Hill as the isolated city in the desert, its outback landscape, the planned design and landscaping of the town, the regeneration areas and particularly the physical reminders of its mining origins such as the Line of Lode, the barren mullock heaps, tailings, skimps and slagheap escarpment and relict structures.
It exhibits historic qualities in its ongoing mining operations since 1883, the current and relict mining infrastructure, and its landscape setting.
It is significant for its industrial past and the adoption of vanguard industrial relations and management policies, together with its role as a pioneer in setting occupational health and safety standards.
I stop at a bank and try to change $12 in notes and $2 coins for $1 coins for the washer and dryer at the motel. The compendium says it only takes $1 coins. The guy at the bank is new. He tells me to wait while he gets a supervisor, as he doesn’t know how to do that ‘in the system’.
Eventually the woman comes out and says, “Sorry, we can’t do that, as there is no way for us to do that within ‘the system’.”
Wow. You can’t just open the till and exchange one type of cash for another type of cash anymore. I stop at two more banks, national chains instead of a local bank like this one, and neither of them can do it either. Everything is recorded ‘in the system’ and they can’t record it if they don’t have an account number to associate it with.
Sheesh, I’m getting screwed over digitally and analogue-wise today.
I go down to the National Parks office shortly before their lunch closure period. The smell of mould is almost overpowering when you walk in. They have some displays of animal skulls and plants in the small front room. I patiently wait while an older lady interrogates the national parks woman. The older lady’s husband just stands there silently, as if he endures this sort of thing often.
The older lady has endless questions, and most of them would be better answered by the general information centre than the national parks people. The national parks lady kinda hints at this, but the woman does not have any self-awareness to pick up on this. She wants to know where there might be a nearby river bed where she could sit and paint. (We are in the desert here – it’s not really a riverbed sort of place.) The woman mentions Stephens Creek (we rode over that coming here) and perhaps something out near Silverton but hints that this area is probably not the best for that.
The woman wants to know where she ‘can connect with the Aboriginal people’. The national parks woman is patient but is perplexed by the question, and says, “well, AS I’VE PREVIOUSLY MENTIONED, you can take a tour with an aboriginal guide at Mutawintji and there are displays about the Barkindji’s association with the region at Kinchega National Park.”
I patiently wait, thinking any moment the old lady with the long white hair and flowing hippie pants, who fancies herself as an artist and friend to First Nations peoples, will finally give up and move on. But she goes on and on for 15 minutes. I think we’re going to get into the lunch closure period before I can get some info.
After she leaves, the national parks woman is apologetic about the delay and says, “she seemed to have A LOT of questions.” I tell her, no worries, and sorry to immediately place demands on her for more info.
She tells me that the main, 2WD road to the park is, indeed, still closed. She says its all chopped up in that one short section and isn’t sure when it will reopen to 4WD vehicles, but it should be soon. The Waterbag Road had water over it in sections and will be rough but it’s typically not too bad in a 4WD. There are sandy sections that mean it is usually never open to 2WDs.
She’s never had anyone come in and ask about riding a pushbike to the national park before. As she responds to my question about biking out there, it dawns on her that I’m the person that was on the pushbike out at Kinchega (the rangers must have reported this – it’s not on the online form). She says, “Oh, you must be Elizabeth! You were at Kinchega with the rain! I tried to ring you to tell you about the rain and to ring us if you had problems, but I couldn’t get through. I guess you made it out okay.”
I tell her, “yes, it’s Emily not Elizabeth, and yeah, I made it out fine on Friday. Sorry about the phone not connecting, I’m on a Telstra number at the moment out here that’s not my normal number and I can’t find a way to change the other number online ‘in the system’.”
We talk further about the road situation and my bike, my experience, my willingness to camp along the road and ability to carry 8-10 days food and 5-6 litres of water for a couple days if required. Another woman comes out and says, “I think there’s a campground between Little Topar and the Waterbag turn-off – you could probably stay there.” She can’t remember the name of it, but there’s a sign for it on the highway. You can also camp at the former roadhouse, but it wouldn’t be that nice.
They also confirm that water is readily available at the national park at the visitor centre and in the campground. They officially say to boil it, but they all drink it from the tap out there and it’s fine. The water at the campground is better than the visitor centre. It’s a shandy of sorts – made up of rainwater and bore water. It tastes magnificent (because the water in Broken Hill tastes… better drunk cold).
They show me all of the different trails on the map, where I can get wifi (visitor centre and one location high on the range on one of the hiking trails) and also let me know that it’s pretty luxurious out there as there are free BBQs AND hot showers. They wish me good luck.
Okay, plus one for analogue – they’ve been really helpful. I have a better idea about the road conditions. It’s going to be a 2-day ride via the 4WD only road, but it’s going to be do-able. I feel much more confident now.
I walk back to the motel and cross the road to the caravan park. I ask if they look after the motel opposite, also, as there is no front desk staff there (you do self check-in and get your key out of a box). They say yes (there’s some sort of consortium or company “Broken Hill Tourist Experience”, or something similar, that seems to own A LOT of places in town). I ask if they can change my notes and $2 coins to $1 coins for the washer. She changes my $5 notes to $2 and $1 coins and says, “the machine will take $2 coins as well.”
Well, shit, I just visited three banks tand two laundromats today on this quest for $1 coins when I could have just broken some notes in my purchases today. Sheesh. Later, when I go over to do laundry, I find that, no, the machines do not take $1 coins, but I’m so exasperated by this quest for laundry change that I can’t be bothered to go back over to the caravan park to get the right coins. Tomorrow will do!