Broken Hill is still principally a mining town, but has many museums and galleries which are worth a view. The railway museum was our first visit and my favourite.
I always visit the computer room first!
I loved the old surveying equipment. I am sure this is very close to what my grandfather used in his surveying days.
Surveying equipment used by the railway engineers
The astonishing thing for me was that Broken Hill was a major rail junction. There was a tram line that ran from here to Silverton, which is now a ghost town. These steam trains pulled that train.
Old Engines of Broken Hill
They also had the Silver Comet, a diesel train that used to connect the various mining towns.
Silver Comet crosses the Sydney Harbour Bridge
There was a lot of cute paraphernalia from the train ways. I liked this inspection car.
The next museum was the silver mint – lots of lovely things to see and buy, but no photos allowed. Finally, we visited Pro Hart’s gallery. A video presentation told me a lot about this artist – I just thought he messed up carpets.
This afternoon Carmel and I visited the the Living Sculpture Garden on a hill overlooking Broken Hill. (You can see the town faintly in the feature picture.)
A faint rainbow to the right of a sculpture
Unfortunately it as cold, windy and about the rain while we were up there, so we did not spend very long. (It seems odd that the rain on this trip was at Kings Canyon, Uluru and Broken Hill.)
Silverton is an abandoned mining town that has discovered as new life as a movie set. It has appeared in many movies that I do not recognise, but I did see “A Town like Alice”. Their big movie was Mad Max 2. Ash, Carmel and I visited the museum.
Mad Max Museum in Silverton
The museum had a number of the vehicles from the movie, mostly stunt doubles and fragments from crashes.
Max’s Interceptor
I must confess I saw the movie but cannot remember much detail. I think we need a Mad Max a-Thon when we return to Sydney.
The Vermin have Inherited the Earth
We reached the souvenir store but there was a queue head of us.
These tame donkeys are a bit of a tourist attraction – they feature on the Silverton facebook page. Ash could not resist a selfie!
We departed Port Augusta this morning and saw our first road sign mentioning Sydney for a couple of months. After driving south for a bit we turned east and crossed the Flinders Ranges. As we crossed, so did a cloud system.
As we go close, we were struck by the greenness of the land after several weeks of red.
Over the ranges we found a lot of amazingly rich looking farm land, growing wheat (we think) canola and some livestock.
The old and new farmhouse. There were many abandoned stone houses on the road.
As we headed east, we were overtaken by the Indian Pacific. (Carmel and I did this trip 20 years ago and loved it.) It should reach Sydney tomorrow morning.
Indian Pacific heading to Sydney
In a few hours we left SA. Carmel and I do intend to come back when we are less encumbered!
