A Backblocker's Pleasure Trip

It was something to have seen the biggest silver mine on earth; but there was nothing else to see in Broken Hill--no parks or gardens, no lakes or streams, only a dull, dusty town, with an environment of bleak hills. We left it cheerfully; we did not even look back from the windows for a last glimpse at its myriad lights as we rolled out on a Sunday night. We thought only of making things comfortable for the 344 mile run to Adelaide, and training our voices back to their natural pitch. It was a relief to trip over the carpet and not feel called upon to apologise for the noise your head made against the wall, and to be able to draw a cork without considering the pop of it.

When you have sampled many ways and means of getting elsewhere in the great spaces of the interior, including rides on donkey back and camel back, in shanghais, sulkies and waggonettes, in mail coaches, carts and bullock-drays, per boot and per bike, you can appreciate a railway car much more than when you come off a sea voyage, or have been used to motoring on civilised roads. It is the most satisfactory way of travelling when you have to cover long distances--but as a means of seeing the country it is a dead failure.