43 °C with window open & in the evening 27 °C.. 500 km further that´s over! Yesterday evening ist was chilling cold! The thermometer said 18 °C, but compared to 27 °C that´s... brrrr! At least we had a campfire. In the morning instead of 23 °C we had freezing 6 °C!! Awfully cold! Great to have a usually very wanted shadowy place...
But at least we had hot showers for $1 each in Port Augusta - REALLY hot showers! This was soooo good!
Clean and warm we went to Kentucky Fried Chicken & afterwards to the garage again, the car drops dead all the time. Some $100 again, but at least they got all the dust out – was obviously quite hard, the last trip – dustwise. We sit in the car – outside it´s too cold. Boy, how good felt 43 °C!

Broken Hill - a town with ritzy, old buildings & bad raods. Even PIZZA HUT was situated in such a historical building and hence not easy to find. $8,95 is the price here! With good filled tummies we found a place for the night outside town & it´s really weird how fast the body can adjust to temperatures! (Forgot to mention: First thing we did in Broken Hill was buying a new thermometer for $ 2,50 at Big W We had 8 (eight !) °C - & sat outside! With "only" T-Shirt, blouse & fleece-pullover!

This morning 6 °C & easy to cope with! It´s hard to imagine how 43 °C feel like and that that is actually too hot! Brunch at Mc Donald´s , an OZ-Burger with beetroot & then on to the Geo Centre, BH City Mineral Collection & unique interactive, geological, metallurgical & mining displays - & right at the beginning we find a "stone" from... Bad Lauterberg - that´s some 10 km from my home town! Isn´t that funny?
They had some weird feelie boxes: Rather ingenuous you put your hand in there - suddenly you hear a loud BANG! & a big "stone" above you starts blinking... the big bang. Yips, you´re quite awake after that & and nearly anxious to go and check the next feelie-box... Very well done, all in all.

After that we sat outside, thinking of what to do next. An elderly man comes over & asks if we wanna see the museum (which we had done already), if we wanna see the Miner´s Cottage, he´d love to open it up for us.
We spent quite some time in the cottage (PICS... films were expensive those days. But I really should have invested some money into it – the pics in my head start to fade away...) – it wasn´t the cottage but the old man who was so incredible interesting. He, too, loves to travel & not only throughout Australia – guess he had been nearly everywhere! Very simpatico and funny, he was! He told us what´s worth to do in Silverton, amongst other things we´ll gonna ask for Quondong Pie. He didn´t want to tell us, though, what the "Silverton Test" would be. Laughing he said, we gonna find out.
We went to Big W eand bought a new air filter - yet again!

It´s raining always & never is the sun shining... We´re sitting in the car & watch through the raindrops on the windscreen out over the Mundi Mundi Plains. Dull prospect.

HThis morning we went to Silverton. First stop: campground & HOT showers for $1. Following we went to visit the cemetery. Never have I seen a graveyard that chaotic! Einen chaotischeren Friedhof habe ich noch nie gesehen! A big site, here some graves in a row, there two graves, over there a single one, crisscross chattered all over the place. Many died young. 5 years, 24, 27... Inscriptions like "for I´m not dead but sleeping here" are odd to discover.

The houses in Silverton were, against one's expectations, widespread, not side by side. The same style as in Broken Hill, massive stone-houses. Interesting to see was Andy Jenkins` Coin Carvery - he makes "jewellery" out of coins. Looks really great, but one copy is alreday $40. He gave us australian Pennies & since my brother will be a goldsmith soon... (pick up the idea again?)...

We tried a Quondong Pie in the Silverton-Hotel - very sweet. & certainly we went for the Silverton-Test - as 1844th this year. We got a certificate and with that are living members of the hotel. Very nice. The rain did stop, after two minutes of thunder straight!