Day 129 – Broken Hill – Silverton Visit

Today seems a lot cooler. It might only get to 40, and that seems a blessing.

We’ve planned to go out to Silverton today, a small town about 25km from Broken Hill. It was founded before Broken Hill when they found silver out here. Short story, silver ran out pretty quickly, but that mine down the road did pretty well.

The road out is interesting. We’ve joked that through WA they used “Flood crossing” signs because they must have brought a bucket load of them, out here it is a “dip” sign. The road is like driving over a marshmallow. We drive out past the Silverton Wind Farm, 50+ wind turbines out on the hill.

We reach the town, and let’s say a ghost town makes it look busy. There is a lookout a bit further out, we’ll go there first.

We come over this rise and are at the Mundi Mundi Lookout, overlooking the Mundi Mundi Plains, Wow. It’s like looking over a dirt ocean, the land is as flat as the sea in just about every direction. We can see dust storms and willy willy’s. It is an amazing site. The wind is coming from the east, maybe not a good omen for the next few days.

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Down onto the plain and over to the Umberumberka Reservoir, a supplementary water supply to Broken Hill. On the way we pass about a dozen small roos resting under small trees and shrubs by the road side. It is about this time we start driving at 50km/h or slower. We’ve never seen so many roos just resting this close to the road.

We reach the reservoir, I expected it to be a dried up hole. Once at the top of the dam we can see that the water is still about half way up the dam wall. It looks muddy, but at least there seems to be water.

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Back to Silverton and we stop at the Gaol, now turned museum. Wow. There is so much “stuff” here. There must be 40 odd rooms plus some outdoor areas all with different themes. We spend about 2 hours and honestly probably only scanned about half of what they had. It was just overwhelming.

We look at the Mad Max Museum, Yup it’s a place, but it seems closed (as are a few other locations that close during the summer). Mad Max 2 was apparently filmed around this area.

We stop at the pub for an early lunch, we are the only ones here, but as the day wears on quite a few other travellers pull in. We have a really nice lunch. The pub has been re-branded many times for different films and commercials, some signage has been kept. There are heaps of photos on the walls of the various movie productions done over in the area over the years. Along with Mad Max 2, there was “A Town Like Alice”, “Razorback” plus a heap of very Aussie TV commercials.

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After lunch we spot the Donkeys, they have around here.  There is a story about them that you could google, but there are two left.  We’ve brought a couple of carrots for them.

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On the drive back, we have a huge chuckle, someone has hand written “Cheese and Onion….” above one of the many “DIP” road warning sign, then we get “Slippery….”. The road, while tar, is like driving on an elastic band. We’re bouncing all over the place. We pass some obvious ones like “French Onion….”. Then clever like “…. Stick” and “lucky……”, finally “Baba Ganoush….”

Into town and a quick refuel ready for tomorrow and then over to the Pro Hart Gallery, which just happens to be in some residential back street. I’m not sure if I ever would have known of this guy if it wasn’t for his carpet artwork commercials from the 80’s (we all remember the tagline “Oh Mr Hart, what a mess”). But the artwork is so recognisable, and it my mind he has always been the face of Broken Hill. The Gallery is great, although the AC has broken down and we’re OK with cooling fans. There are heaps of great painting here, there is a DVD playing with the carpet commercials. Oh and the Rolls Royces’ are all outside.

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What a great way to spend an afternoon. The kids are less enthused, and this slightly cuts short the visit. Justine & I could have spent a lot longer here, but we give in to the inevitable. On the way out through, of course, the gift shop, Justine finally spots something worth getting – a 1,000 piece jigsaw (Justine is a jigsaw buff) of the Pro Hart “carpet dragonfly”. Best gift shop purchase ever!