Broken Hill was the second stay on our three day drive from Forster, NSW to Clare, SA – a total distance of 1700km. This journey became known to us as ‘the great escape from NSW’. At the time, it was an escape from torrential rain and flooding. A bit further down the track it was also an escape from the COVID-19 pandemic – we remained in COVID-19 free South Australia and Northern Territory until the end of the pandemic.

As SA and NT were COVID-19 free areas, they had closed their borders to any other State or Territory with COVID-19 cases. At the time that we made this journey, NSW was also COVID-19 free – so all we had to do was fill in a declaration form and get a border-crossing approval notice from SA police (and also keep our fingers crossed that there wasn’t a COVID-19 outbreak before we reached the SA border – which was on the last day of the three day drive).

The drive from Dubbo to Broken Hill was 750km and we stopped in Nyngan and Cobar.

Leaving Broken Hill it was about 35 minutes drive to Cockburn on the South Australian border. After that, we passed a string of very abandoned looking settlements before we arrived three hours later in Burra – the first proper town we came to in South Australia.