Broken Hill Outback Resort, NSW

We pre-booked a week at the Broken Hill Outback Resort, which is located about 15 kilometres east of Broken Hill. The reviews of the only other two caravan parks in town spoke less than highly of the them; one with 'perms' the other with 'thieves' leaving us with the 'Resort' as our only option. What we didn't realise until upon our arrival was that the place was still a construction site. Not exactly what we had envisaged when booking a 'Resort' for the higher than average rate of $40 per night...

A couple of days after we checked in the owner knocked on our door asking if we'd like to help out with odd jobs around the 'Resort' for the amazingly generous wage of $13.33 per hour. How could we refuse. Haha! We've been offered caravan park work in the past and have always declined, as hospitality and caravan park tourism aren't industries we want to get involved with. However, the romanticised story of the 'Resort' made us smitten with the place so we agreed to work six days a week, ten hours a day for the next three weeks. 

We lasted seven days... But first back to the romance... the Mount Gipps pub, located in an unincorporated council area was shut in the late 1980's and left abandoned until it was rediscovered by passerby and local businessman, Scott Smith who created a vision to renovate the pub and turn the area into a luxury spa-cabin, caravan park, camp ground, pub, restaurant, conference centre and day-spa complex. Ambitious, absolutely! Admittedly the restoration of the original Mount Gipps pub looks terrific and lures you into the vision, but honestly we believe the project encompasses far too many sub-projects to be viable, and from what we can tell, the owners don't appear to have an understanding of the caravan market, but I guess as that age old adage goes, only time will tell...

During our seven day flogging, I mean employment, we cleaned multiple bathrooms, the camp kitchen, completed more random cleaning around the bar, deck and entertainment areas, Shovel had a crash course in sprinkler operations and maintenance and cleaned daily the filters for the 'Resorts' water supply that runs directly from Stephens Reserve located a few kilometres up the road. The Reserve's water level is quite low, therefore Shovel was cleaning thick mud from the eight large sock-like filters. We also assisted in yard work, Shovel was incredibly impressive driving the mad-max style ancient equipment and we got dirty shovelling, moving individual sheets of gypsum, picking up after the tradies and trenching. We also worked through 35+ degree temperatures, a huge afternoon-long dust storm, a day of drenching rain and retrieved the Managers dog, Ranger who took us on an adventure and admittedly our funnest moment of the week (although don't tell the owners) as he took-off into outback along a dry creek bed for about two kilometres, chasing kangaroos. Despite being completely exhausted and in desperate need of a drink Ranger had had the time of his life. Not surprisingly we were ready to hit the road again after a week...