Today was a huge day exploring plenty that Broken Hill had to offer. We started out up at the Line of Lode Miners Memorial – a beautiful tribute to all the miners in Broken Hill who have lost their lives over the past 140 years. The Line of Lode is the long body of ore that sits in the centre of Broken Hill, where the lead / zinc / silver mining first commenced (and still occurs today). The memorial is perched up on top of the tailings of the Line of Lode, so the view over Broken Hill is quite spectacular as well.
We ticked off another Big Thing while we were there:
While still waiting for things to open on a Sunday morning, we went for a wander around some of the centre of Broken Hill. Ahead of visiting Pro Hart’s gallery, we stopped by to check out his sculpture of a Big Ant:
We then headed up to the north side of Broken Hill where Pro Hart’s gallery is. I’d been really looking forward to visiting since we decided to travel to Broken Hill as part of this holiday. Most people my age will remember our first introduction to Pro Hart through this tv ad – still ingrained in my brain to this day (“Oh mister Hart!”). But I did know of his paintings and his style of art. It was really amazing to wander through the gallery looking at so many different works of his, and read small elements about his life as well. I think what amazed me most was how the kids were really engrossed by all his paintings as well! They loved finding all different elements and details as we wandered around.
From there, we headed to another gallery – the Silver City Mint & Art Centre. We wandered through the gallery section, and a few other rooms – and the art here was fine, but it definitely felt a bit more tacky and touristy. The main purpose of coming here was to see the enormous 100m long canvas painting – supposedly the biggest in the world. It really was quite amazing to see and think of how it was painted – it took Peter Anderson 2 years to paint it. It covers some amazing landscapes across the district, all merged into one long painting.
Our next stop was something we were really looking forward to: Bell’s Milk Bar! But sadly, they weren’t able to open today – just a sign on the door saying that circumstances meant they weren’t able to open as planned. It was a bit disappointing, but we hoped everything was ok for them. Someone on the street who saw us out the front mentioned that the other milk bar a few doors down did pretty good milkshakes – Pepe’s – and so we decided to head there and give it a go. Huge milkshakes, and super thick – we all really loved them. So it was still a delicious morning tea (although the milkshakes were so big that we didn’t even feel like lunch until about 3pm).
After a brief pause back at our accomodation for a while (and a cheeky chance for me to drop into the Broken Hill Distillery to collect some goodies), we headed out to Silverton for the afternoon. First stop was the Mad Max 2 Museum. Neither of us have seen Mad Max, but most people had mentioned that it was still worth dropping into the Museum to learn about how the movie was made in and around Silverton. It was definitely a really interesting visit, and they had some really incredible bits of memorabilia. The collection of quite a few cars and other vehicles from Mad Max was also pretty amazing.
We wandered around Silverton for a little while, doing a short loop looking at the buildings – but the flies were so excessive and annoying. One of the locals mentioned they’d only appeared in the last week or so – so it definitely wasn’t normal. We dropped into the Silverton Hotel to escape the flies, and had a late lunch / afternoon tea there. It’s such a great little pub, and they love displaying all their history and visits around the walls.
We still a little bit of time to kill before our sunset activity that we’d been looking forward to in Silverton – and so we took a short drive about 10 minutes out of Silverton to the Mundi Mundi lookout. It was one of those things that we’d heard and seen mentioned, it was close by, and we love a good lookout. As we drove along the Wilangee Rd there was a really huge crest just before the lookout, and I joked that it looked like the road was just about to completely drop away – I barely finished that sentence before the whole car gave an audible gasp at the view ahead of us. It was an incredible openness of plains and hills with barely anything in sight. We’ve seen quite a few beautiful views – especially over the last few days – but this one really aced it. We pulled in and just admired the vastness of what was out to the west. The border with SA was only about 20km away – but you wouldn’t have known it. We desperately wanted to stay and watch the sunset there, but we had other plans…
The main exciting reason for us being at Silverton this evening was for a sunset camel ride! We headed out to the Silverton Outback Camels farm close to 5pm (sunset is at about 5:45pm), and we all enjoyed getting to know a bunch of other animals that hang around on the farm – plenty of goats, an attention-seeking pig, and two very enthusiastic dogs. We got our helmets on and headed over to get lined up on our camels – Daniel was lucky enough to have his own camel, and Alexander shared with Debbie, and I shared with Eliza. The owner of the farm, Petah, was really friendly and made the whole adventure so much fun. As we rode along in our camel train, she and her couple of helpers chatted with us – but she also told us a lot about the history of Silverton. We rode out of the farm and into the main streets of Silverton as the sun was setting, all the way down to the Silverton Hotel for a very perfect photo shot of a bunch of camels riding along in front of this iconic pub! There were plenty of laughs along the way, but also just a beautiful sense of peace and quiet as we meandered slowly along through the scrubland and dirt tracks of Silverton. It was everything we hoped it would be, and such a brilliant way to end our time in Broken Hill.
