DESTINY KNOWN: Broken Hill

08/03/2015

Broken Hill

G'day Mates,

It's time to move on, this is what I wrote the 5th of February....

Every time you pack up your things to go to the next stop it is very exciting. As soon as I'm doing my daily exercise and my hubby is preparing lunch for later so we don't have to struggle in the heat, I'm getting a knot in my stomach;

Where will we be tonight, how will it be, will we have a smooth trip, will there be exciting things on our way, when we are going to a free camp, will there be other people etc etc.

We now packed up from Mildura and are heading to Broken Hill. It's promising to be approx. 35 degrees today and our air condition isn't working . Aah well, we will see, just open the windows.

Its Movie time;

Already approx an hour out of Mildura towards North, you can notice we are going to the outback as chauffeurs of oncoming traffic start waving, means you are coming into a remote area with very little traffic .

And then, approx. 100 km from Broken Hill we noticed that our navigator suddenly had a different time then we and then we figured out that we went a half hour back in time. Can you imagine even how vast this country is? Further to the West we will be confronted with more time difference!

Arriving in Broken Hill we straight went to the racecourse where you could camp;

At night we had a beautiful Moon....

And during day some nice wildlife....

You could think, "how on earth can they create a town like Broken Hill in the middle of nowhere, closest civilisation is approx. 280 km away" , well the name says it all, it is a broken hill with much different, very valuable, minerals in it like silver, that's why it's also called Silver City. The Broken Hill ore body if born 1700 million years ago when thermal springs deposit silver, lead and zinc sulphides formed in mud from hot springs in the ocean floor.

We have been here 3 nights, staying at the race course which was terrific! You could stay there for $ 15.00 but then you have no power so we decided to take the power for $ 25.00 and that was a good choice as it was bloody hot and you can't do without air conditioning.

Broken hill is like a lot of little towns and especially country towns, on its way back. Local shops are closed and the buildings are empty often also neglected. But still it is an genuine, outback, Aussie Town.

Some more impressions of the Town;

In the old days there was not much material but iron so a lot of houses were and we saw still are being made of corrugated iron and it doesn't look bad at all!

Except for a few haha;

If you are a art or museum lover then you might not have enough on one day visit. We did one day Broken Hill, even went to a museum!, and one day the surrounding which includes Silverton on which I will come back in next story.

I must admit that there also were a few things closed like the information centre on top of the Line of Lode so we couldn't spent much time there. The view was great though and so was the Miners Memorial. It's most probably that this is not the most popular time of the year to go to Broken Hill, too hot.

Miners Memorial

And then the Palace Hotel. You will be amazed by the pictures and this is the story;

AN INDIGENOUS ARTIST FROM PT AUGUSTA BY THE NAME OF GORDON WAYE CAME INTO THE HOTEL. MARIO ASKED HIM TO PAINT A WALL IN THE FRONT BAR, WHICH GORDON PAINTED IN 8HRS. OVER A PERIOD OF YEARS GORDON PAINTED ALL THE OTHER MURALS MOSTLY IN A LANDSCAPE THEME. THE ONLY STIPULATION WAS THAT SCENES CONTAIN A WATER FEATURE, SO THAT THE HOTEL WOULD FEEL LIKE AN OASIS IN THE OUTBACK.

The Palace was made famous in the 1994 Australian movie "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert". Broken Hill is a popular location for movies and many great scenes from Priscilla were filmed in and around the Silver City, including inside Mario's Palace Hotel.

The museum we went to was worth the money. I especially wanted to see the silver tree (sorry, it was prohibited to make a picture of the tree) but besides that there were a lot of beautiful minerals to see, all found in Broken Hill.