Broken Hill & Silverton

Day 6 – Easter Friday 2nd April
Back-to-the Future ( but not in a Delorean) to Broken Hill, it seemed like the whole town was fleeing the Menindee and checked into the caravan park that was inhabited by many grey nomads and their shiny vans. A historical car convention was to be held on Saturday & with the various older style architecture it felt like we’d gone back in time.
Not wanting to be over come by the greyness, we set up camp and then drove towards Silverton (aka Mad Max territory & Mundi Mundi Plains). Silverton was a mining area that was quite busy until the minerals boom at Broken Hill. It is now literally a town with a famous pub and that’s basically why tourist come into this area (and also camel rides) The pub is small but has starred in many movies (Wake in fright, Mad Max, Town Like Alice, The Craic, etc) and television commercials. The pub is full of photo memorabilia and good beer!
After our bevarage and pose by the mad max car, we wondered around Silverton, checking out the remaining old buildings and the famous quirky artist Peter Brown (better known for his cheeky Emus), as most of the town was systematically removed & over time replaced in Broken Hill.


That evening we headed to the Sculpture Symposium exhibit at sunset. This symposium was created in 1993 and consists of 12 sculptures created by different artists from all around the world. It was a picturesque way to view the sunset over Broken Hill and desert area.

We had a meal in the West Darling Hotel – a pub that hasn’t changed much since the 1890’s, a couple of the same locals too.

Day 7 – Saturday 3rd April
Broken Hill (Pro Hart, Geoscience Australia, the)
Broken Hill (also known as The Silver City) is a very interesting town in that it basically exists because of the silver mine. The Silver was discovered by Charles Rasp in 1883 and since then the mining company BHP has reaped the rewards of the lode that was underneath the ‘broken hill’. The town however realises the limits of this resource thus art is also a big industry.
We were amazed by the Pro Hart exhibition gallery – a must see for anyone who visits Broken Hill along with a few other local artists galleries, unfortunately a rather stout, loud & self congratulating lady bought Jamie’s favourite piece (that was for sale), although he realised that he didn’t have a spare $2,500 in anycase.
We also widened our geological knowledge by visiting the Geoscience museum.
We had some new tent neighbours that night, 3 men who were motorcycling throughout Australia. One of them used the word ‘grouse’ in a sentence – great to see the lingo is still alive in Australia.

Dinner was at the Democratic club – Broken Hill is the place where the big union movement was pushed and the 35 hour working week was put into place. Luckily they were showing the waratahs on the TV rather than AFL which is all we will probably see as we venture further west!

Day 7 – Easter Sunday 4th April
The Easter Bilby found its way to our tent and left two Chocolate Easter Bilby’s.
After felling all pious from hearing from Broken Hill’s Bishop, we left Broken Hill and soon crossed the border into South Australia. Silly Vanessa forgot that there were salad leaves in the fridge so the border man took them, he probably ate them for his lunch, but the jokes he made about Vanessa running along side the car to make up for the salad that she’ll miss went down like a lead balloon.
The Barrier Highway we drove on was parallel to the railway line so we saw many pubs that existed because of the train stops for surrounding farm land and old railway buildings.




We ended our day in Peterborough – a cutsey town that was established because of the rail line connecting Adelaide to NSW and was also an area where many trains were assembled. SO, if you love trains and love beer (there are five pubs in the main street – the main street is about 200m long) Peterborough is the place for you!
We fell asleep that night to the sounds of the Hillbilly Hoot Festival (truly this is what it was called) playing to the locals in the adjacent park.