Dear George, Sandy and that pitcher of Sam Adams Summer Ale,

Midway is a small local bar in the middle of Ashford, CT.  It is also the place where 10 months ago, a homesick Aussie made a promise to the two people sitting on either side of her at the bar that if they came to Australia, her dad would take them on an outback adventure.  Lots of hypothetical plans have been made at midway over the years.  Only one that I know of ends up like this:

Welcome to Outback, New South Wales!

Where emu's roam, ancient human (and mega fauna) remains abound, and you can actually see the curve of the earth over the Mundy Mundy Plains.  And don't even get me started on the flies.  

Before heading off into the red center, however, we had to await the arrival of our third member of the Summer Ale pact: Denise.  And her arrival couldn't have been planned better, as St. Patrick's Day was just around the corner.  So we did what we are good at and celebrated in style:

In fact, we made such a big impact in the land down under...we made the local news.  Yep, we are kind of a big deal. 

And thus began our outback adventures!  Our first stop was Mungo National Park home to the remains of a people who lived over 50,000 years ago.  And also home to a lot of flies.  Now, I don't want to distract from the historical importance of Mungo Lake, but it is a little hard to think clearly when there are about 50 flies crawling into your mouth, up your nose and over your eyeballs.  In fact, it's pretty hard to do anything other than this:

Luckily, Craig came prepared:

Ahhhh....much better!

Now, properly attired, we headed further into the center.  Passing gigantic wedge-tailed eagles, flocks of rare red-tailed cockatoos and who knows what else was hiding out there...

After about 1000 km cruising along the mighty Murray River and up the Darling, we landed in our ultimate destination: Broken Hill.  Anyone that has had the great fortune of seeing Priscilla Queen of the Desert will remember Broken Hill from the epic standoff in the Palace Hotel between the local miners and the Sydney drag queens.  Today, the actual broken hill, sitting just on the edge of town, has been turned completely inside out, a reminder of the former glory of the mining town. While a few mines still run, they are mostly shut down relics like this one

Strangely enough, in the place of the old mining boom, Broken Hill and its surrounding have found themselves in the center of a new art boom.  The pinnacle of which being the Broken Hill Sculpture Garden.  Armed with champagne, cheese and crackers (typical miner's fare) we made it to the site just in time for sunset.

Other highlights from the trip included: a visit to the Royal Flying Doctors Service hangar, a class session of the School of the Air (computer based schooling for isolated farm children), Silverton (think mad max), and of course some sand dune shenanigans:

Believe it or not, after a month based in Victoria, the return from Broken Hill marked the end of my time with the Iskovs.  A sad day indeed.  But thank you, thank you, thank you to Craig, Kay, Megan, Brylie and Richard for putting up with me and offering me a home quite literally on the other side of the world.