White Cliffs

Monday 24 June 2002

Track Notes	Broken Hill to White Cliffs. 298km.
Fuel
Camp site	Old Pioneer Reserve. Cost $11 per day plus $1 coin operated showers. Bring own water for drinking. All the money collected from campers is used by the local community to maintain and improve the Reserve. There is power, showers, laundry, toilets and BBQs. The site is well maintained and a lot of shade trees have been planted.

Turn off Barrier Highway at Wilcannia for 95km. Today there is about 70km of the road sealed and the remainder is well graded.

25/06/02

White Cliffs was born through the discovery of opal in the 1890's. There is a heritage trail that we walked in the morning through the opal mines and did the remainder by car in the afternoon. We visited the underground motel which looks very good as well as an opal shop to have a look at some of the finished product. We also visited the "Telecentre" and uploaded the updates to our web page using the laptop and phone line connection ($3.30).

The Photovoltaic (Solar) Power Station is very interesting. It opened in 1984 but the power goes into the state grid and was not available to the town when opened. The townspeople had to use generators for their electricity. The town was connected to the state electricity grid in 1996.

Cobar