Thursday 5 February 2009

Broken Hill and the Living Desert

This morning, I did a little walk in the desert... Kangaroos were enjoying their pick nick...


The Living Desert Flora and Fauna Sanctuary is a protected area near Broken Hill. Bordered by an electric predator proof fence, this reserve highlights the importance of preserving our environment.


It is a good occasion to see native plants in their natural environment. Sturt's desert peas cannot live without humidity. They start blossoming as soon as there is sufficient rain.


A bluebush... You can eat it! The leaves are a bit juicy, and nicely salty.




Not far from the Living Desert is the Sculpture Symposium. Pieces of art in the middle of nowhere...


From there, you can see the city in a distance...






On the horizon, the Pinnacles... These are not natural hills: they were born from the mine...




A kangaroo, again! Many Aussies say they are a pest, but they still look really cute... Don't huge them though... They are very skilled boxers!


Thanks to Ian, who was a great guide, I had a beautiful day!

Back at the hostel, I bumped into another guest and we decided to look for a bar to spend the evening...
We were curious about the Mario Palace Hotel, famous because of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert...

From the outside, the house looked great. It has on of the biggest terraces I have seen in Australia so far.


The bar door was closed. So we entered through the hotel door... And this is what we saw...


All the walls were painted. It may look a bit kitsch at first, but the whole thing was really beautiful. It had a very strange atmosphere too. There was nobody there. We wandered around for a while, went up to the first floor...


The dining room looked ready for guests, but it was obvious that it had not been used for quite a while... It was really dusty! The whole thing looked like a partly abandoned and derelict house, that had not lost anything of its beauty.


We walked around a bit, it was amazing! But when we got out, one thing was sure: we had to look for another place to spend the evening.

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