Pleasant Pheasant Farmer's Farm and Broken Hill

We arrived in Broken Hill on Sunday night and were pleasantly surprised with the accommodation that I had booked. Thanks Bettina from the Science Circus for putting me onto that one. It's like a real house! That's something special when you're used to living in fibro cabins. The cabins are good - but this is great.

We haven't had a chance to do much sightseeing as of yet, and now it's completely pissing down right in the middle of a drought and while I've got my clothes on the line! Spose they need the rain... :)

Broken Hill's got everything that a sizeable town should and I wonder how much effort and energy goes in to providing all of these facilities all the way out here. I like the look of the town - it's unusual. There is a huge wall of a hill that I think may be man-made from the mines that dominates the scenery, on top of which sits a small and trendy looking restaurant. I'll have to put a photo up because it's pretty striking.

Well, we just came from the small Victorian town of Swan Hill in which I spent a good slab of time feverishly playing Dynasty Warriors 4 - Empires on the PS2. Thanks Rich for introducing another addictive game into my life when you know that i have a problem. So after bankruptcy and a divorce i managed to finally finish that and actually go out on the town and look around. After much (verbal) probing of the locals, we discovered that the sum total of worthwhile tourist attractions was a giant cod situated near the middle of town. Here is a photo of me and the cod enjoying each other's company. We then ventured out of town to a nearby pheasant farm last friday. As we pulled up a sign instructed us to beep our horn and out came Farmer Kevin with huge smile and all the time in the world to show us around and answer all of our pheasant-related questions. I'm pleased to say that we came up with a suprising amount of such questions, particularly when we saw one pheasant who was sick of being female and as such was slowly becoming a man-pheasant. Interesting. There were also heaps of other birds and a walk-in aviary. I met a 75 year-old cockatoo and a wide array of pretty pheasants - some with tail feathers that can grow up to 2 metres long. Who would've thought that the pheasant farm would be so interesting? We ended up sitting down with Kevin at the end of the tour for an in-depth conversation about social issues such as global warming, fast food, and people who drive to the gym and then go on treadmills and exercise cycles. He was a cool guy; really open minded and welcoming. In fact, we struck up such a rapport with the old chap that as we were leaving, he gave us a frozen pheasant to cook up for dinner some night. Sensational! Well the next night after the pheasant had defrosted, I played a few rounds of poker against it before cooking it up and eating it. It's pretty nice; kind of like chicken but more tasty and stringier. Anyway here is a photo of said game of poker right before the pheasant won a hand in which my watch, motorbike, and the 15 dollars that you can see were up for grabs. Never mind - I got mine in the end. More about Broken Hill soon.