At the end of the festival we stayed an extra night to let the dust settle and the crowds start making their way onwards to their next destination. While we weren’t the last to leave we were pretty close and it was great to see that nearly no rubbish was left behind just pathways beaten into the red soil leaving a framework for the next Mundi Mundi bash and their campers to build their site around.
Our original plan was to head back to Silverton and the the Silverton pub for a night along with a couple of hundred others, unfortunately though a huge rain trough was forecast to come through (familiar?) and we would have been cut off if it did so we decided to head on to Broken Hill and set up camp there for a few days. The storm duly arrived just after we set up and sure enough 400mm of rain fell and all the roads in and out of Broken Hill flooded. In fact even our campsite flooded.
In fact most of the surrounding area was flooded and roads were shut which meant loads of people scrambling to change plans and routes onwards out of Broken Hill. Like a few other travellers we decided to stay and enjoy the sites of the town for a few days while everything dried out.
The town of Broken Hill is about 1000km due west of Sydney and right on the western edge of NSW. The skyline to the south of the town is dominated by the mullock heap (residue from an earlier mine) and Broken Hill in fact only came into existence because of the discovery of lead, silver and zinc in the area and the subsequent mining boom. It began in the late 1800s and soon after the mining began a group of seven men created Broken Hill Proprietary (BHP) which has gone on to become one of the largest mining companies in the world.
On our way into Broken Hill our clocks changed to South Australian time (a half our difference). While we thought it just a glitch in the matrix we later learned that in fact Broken Hill had adopted SA time after an argument with Sydney. Back when Broken Hill was developing its mines it requested that upgrades be done to the train tracks so it could ship its produce more easily to Sydney. The story goes that the Sydney government replied that Broken Hill was a “mere speck on the map” and denied the request. The officials from Broken Hill responded that from where they were (some 1000km west of Sydney) “Sydney also looked like a mere speck on the map” and followed up by aligning themselves with South Australia and train lines that led to Adelaide. I don’t know how much of the rhetoric is true but the train lines were built to South Australia and the time zone change remains.
The town itself has some wonderful buildings lining the Main Street and we had a great time wandering up and down admiring the old architecture. The back streets too contained many old miners cottages which are now heritage listed and many have been beautifully restored.
There were a few museums and art galleries around town too and it was interesting to learn the history of the mining of the town we were also able to enjoy a beer in the The Palace hotel which was made famous by the film Priscilla Queen of the Desert.
The best of the art galleries was the Pro Hart gallery which has been set up in the actual studios where he did most of his paintings. He is obviously a fantastic painter and having now travelled through a little bit of the outback it’s great to be able to appreciate how well he captured not only the colours but the life of the outback in Australia.
Our trip to Silverton had been delayed due to rain and by the time we got to go back it was a dry dust bowl of a place once again. Surrounded by nothing but red dirt and bindies it was once a thriving town where silver was mined. However after the silver dried up most of the town was relocated to Broken Hill..in fact houses were actually put on the back of horse drawn carriages and pulled the 25km to Broken Hill.
Now Silverton is a little touristy place consisting of a pub and a few galleries and a disappointing museum. There is a tribute to the Mad Max films which were filmed out here and if you have seen the films it is exactly what the surrounds of this area still look like.
The golf course at Broken Hill is on the outskirts of town and looked fantastic with the green of the grass of the course surrounded by the rocky red desert. Visually it was superb and in fact it was a great course too considering the deluge of rain which had fallen during the previous week.
We had walked a bit of the mountain bike tracks with Griff to assess whether they were going to be dry enough to be rideable and once they were we saddled up and had a superb time on the tracks out the back of the town. Some of the views we had during the ride were just amazing and it was quite surreal riding about in the rocky desert. The tracks probably needed a little bit of TLC to fix up the damage from the rains but we had an awesome time.
About an hours drive southeast of Broken Hill is Lake Menindee. We took a day trip there and the drive was pretty spectacular through the recently drenched desert where we were able to see the colours of the plants coming through so while it was fairly desolate countryside there was a beautiful array of colours on display. Couple that with some emus bounding along next to us and it was a pretty special drive.
The lake itself was full to over brimming and unfortunately a sort of muddy grey colour. Having said that it was impressive to see such a huge expanse of water in the middle of the desert. We visited a place called Sunset Strip which was a collection of about 140 holiday huts in 2 rows facing west over the lake. There was a community hall and a golf course (unfortunately we didn’t have our golf gear). It was an unusual little place but the locals we met enjoyed coming here to get away from Broken Hill (the metropolis that it is!).
Our last sight at Broken Hill involved a short drive out of town to the living sculptures park which was on the top of a jump up and consisted of a collection of about a dozen sculptures carved in stone. It was a great idea and we thoroughly enjoyed walking around looking at them while taking in the vistas of the surrounds and the town of Broken Hill in the background. T
