Broken Hill, N.S.W.

Broken Hill welcomes you with a tall shaft headframe on every road into town, just to let you know that you’re entering a mining town. A high central ridge dominates the city centre, and we later learn that this is predominately made of spoil from a century of mining, and that beneath this ridge is the lode of silver, lead and zinc that was responsible for establishing Broken Hill in the first place. This lode is the largest of its kind ever found on earth, and the seven blokes who discovered it and started the first mine in the 1880s are revered as heroes today. They were the founders of BHP.

What’s strange to me is that this large town of nearly 20,000 population is nowhere near a water source, and all its water is piped from a hundred kilometres away at Lake Menindie. The lack of such a valuable resource is evident in the sandy terrain and sparse gardens, and we’re told that it hasn’t rained here since last October. Yet, there is also evidence that when it does rain, it floods because there are no underground drains in the streets. Therefore, the streets have a camber on them that slope into high-walled gutters, and there are culverts at the end of every street to collect the runoff and direct it to wetlands.

The Miner's Memorial, at left, on top of the massive slag pile in the middle of Broken Hill.

There seems to be a pub on every corner, but its 20-odd pubs now is nothing on the 70-odd pubs in its heyday when the population was over 30,000. One such pub, The Palace Hotel, was where “Priscilla” was filmed in 1994. Some of Broken Hill’s famous residents (now no longer with us) include actor Chips Rafferty, singer June Bronhill (who changed her last name to commemorate her birthplace) and artist Pro Hart. We visited Pro’s gallery and grave, and he is obviously a popular figure in the town’s history. There are many art galleries and there are many pieces (Pro’s and others) adorning parks and gardens in the city centre. There’s even a set of desert stone sculptures just on the outskirts, and while viewing them we witnessed a sunset that will be etched in the memory for a long time. It was like red clouds boiling in the sky.

Sunset in the Australian outback.

If Broken Hill is in the middle of nowhere, then Silverton must be in another dimension. Just 20 kilometers away, it is truly in the desert and only consists of a few sporadic homesteads and a pub. Famous for being the filming location for “Mad Max 2” in 1981, they milk this as much as possible, and there’s even a guy who has turned his house into a museum in Silverton dedicated solely to the movie. We went out to the Mundi Mundi lookout, where the tanker rollover was filmed for Mad Max 2 and where the locals say it’s so flat you can see the curvature of the earth. Both take a little imagination to appreciate.

Silverton.

We’ve loved Broken Hill. It’s friendly and charming, unique and steeped in an interesting history. We stayed longer than we intended, but now it’s time to move on.