Hi All

Sydney is located at the mouth of the Paramatta river and has a ferry system setup to transport people from certain areas around the harbour and down the river to downtown. It's pretty cool. Paloma and Paul live close to the Manly ferry.

Anyways I left Sydney Tuesday, January 22nd early from Manly on the Jetcat. The JetCat is the high speed Jet Catermaran (sp). Bumped into a young guy from Canada and chatted for awhile. He was on his way up the coast to work. He was planning on staying for a year, working as he made his way around.

I should mention that Australia has an hourly minimum wage but is based on what you do. So the minimum wage for a fast food worker is different than that of a secretary, etc. and I think it also depends upon your age in some way.

It took about 17 hours to get to Broken Hill. The first 6 hours were on the train through the Blue Mountains to a town called Dubbo. I saw a lot of charred areas where the fires had been. The second part was on a bus and was through the then outback, which is pretty scubby land. Cost for this trip, an amazing $116. Multiply by x.82 to get Canadian dollars. The temperature reached 36 that day. Glad everything had air conditioning.

I got dropped off at 10:45 pm and soon found that most of the hotels were closed. Luckily "The Palace" was open and I was just able to get a room. The Palace is famous for being in the film "Prescilla Queen of the Desert". Inside is covered in murals. Hope the pictures turn out. That night I was plagued by Mosquitoes in my room but couldn't understand where in the heck they would have been coming from since we were practically in the desert. The next day I had breakfast alone in a room that easily seated 80. Strange, where was everyone? In the morning I did a mine tour of a silver, lead, zinc mine. This mine was the start for BHP which became, at one point, the biggest company in Australia after it diversified. Anyways it also spawned the earliest and strongest Unions in the country. Funny how
those two things went hand in hand. I guess we should thank the stinking filthy rich at the turn of the century for the birth of the unions.

In the aft I went to Silverton, famous for many movies including Mad Max II and Razorback. While on tour I was told this was the off season in the area as most people visited in the winter. Normaly the temperatures got into the 40s, their record being 47 degrees c. Lukily for me they were having a cold spell and it only got to 33c that day. Explains why the town was empty. I was also told that Mad Max 4 had started being filmed. Feral Child from MMII
grows up and the story is of him searching for Max, so I was told.

That evening I checked out a couple of local pubs. Just my luck. At the last pub on my last beer I had the moves put on me by a rather large drunk aboriginal woman. It got so bad I nearly had to leave behind my beer, but was finally able to finish my beer and escape unscathed. Back to the
Palace and another night of skeeter attacks.

In the morning I ate alone again in the room that would seat 80 and then caught the bus to adelaide.

Martin