Outback NSW in a Nissan Pathfinder

Nissan kindly provided a new Pathfinder Ti for a month, so we headed for outback NSW, and given the actual time we had available for travel (1 week), Broken Hill seemed like a reasonable destination. Our trip around Broken Hill would not have been complete without checking out Pro Hart's gallery, and Patricia found a painting high up on the wall that she wanted! Its still there!

Patricia at the Pro Hart Gallery.

On to Silverton, a nearby ghost town and a chance to see some more outback art. Peter Browne had left his gallery in the care of a young lady, so missed out on the opportunity to have an emu painted on the back of the car! Nissan is probably grateful for that!

Peter Browne's Silverton Gallery

Outback road near Silverton


The highlight of the trip of around 2500 kms was the night spent in White Cliffs in the Underground Motel. An interesting experience with a constant 22 degrees Celcius to insulate us from the real world. Very comfartable rooms, excellent meals and very friendly people. However, our search of the mullock heaps revealed....nothing! Not a single chip or opal to be found so the fruits of our 9 to 5 labours in the real world world paid the bills. Our dreams of finding our fortune...or at least enough to pay the motels bill, were not realised!


The Nissan Vs Toyota Landcruiser

Photo taken with Nikon compact camera and scanned using photoshop and umax scanner.

The Nissan drove through this bog hole in the Little Desert with no hassles, and then returned to tow out the Toyota. (Oops! Not sure if I should be telling Nissan that I was towing a Toyota with their nice new 4WD!)

This Toyota decided not to use the carpark near Mitre Rock! (Photograph imported from digital picture on disk produced by National Photos - let them know I sent you!)


The Nissan vs The Jeep

Photograph taken with Apple Quicktake 150

For those interested in the vehicle....yes it was more comfortable than the Jeep. Best features were the smooth suspension and the ABS brakes which seemed to work more smoothly on the Pathfinder. You knew when they worked, but the pedal feel was nowhere near as dramatic as the Jeep.

The sunroof was handy for popping the head out to take a quick photo of the scenery (Only when stationary of course) , but really too noisy at highway speeds. Around town the wind noise is minimal. Even at highway speed the deflector does a good job of keeping the wind out, so that you get no more than a nice breeze going over your head. To get the wind in the hair sports car feel you'd need to wind down all the windows and have the sunroof open.....if that's what you wanted!

Seats were firmer than the Jeep but even over a long distance were very comfortable. Kept looking for the cruise control though, as the motor was more than willing to give the cops a chance to fill their quota if you didn't keep an eye on the speedo!


The bottom line....would I swap my Jeep for one? Well, if the price was right! The only problem would be the money I have spent setting up the Jeep. (Bull bar, locking diff, rear step towbar etc.) I'd hate to have to start over. To be fair, I could live with the Nissan's suspension as is, the Jeep still needs some work! It would be interesting to compare the Nissan with the Grand Cherokee which is a modern design, more in line with the quality and finish of the Pathfinder. With the current price of the Grand Cherokee Laredo, the choice would be tough!


The Photographs

The photograph of the Nissan and Jeep together was taken using a digital camera (Apple Quicktake 150) The red Landcruiser bogged in the carpark was produced by importing the image from digital photographs produced by National Photos (a Qld based mail order service!) Free software was supplied which enabled easy transfer to the home page. (Claris Home Page automatically converted the saved image to JPEG) Other photographs were scanned from prints and cropped using photoshop.

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