Broken Hill 1st day

Thursday 22nd April 2010, We all set off to explore Broken Hill. Our first stop, White’s mine museum where Kevin, an ex-miner has built a replica of a mine to give you the feeling of being underground and what is was like in the early days. It was dark inside and lit with a candle. He is passionate about preserving the history of mining in BH and through a video with lots of old footage, demonstrations of the old equipment and explaining his excellent model showed us how mining has progressed from horse drawn buckets to almost computer controlled mining. He explained the dangers the miners were exposed to because of the poor conditions. Over 450 miners died of lead poisoning, accidents and lung complaints caused by the dust and these conditions continued from 1883 until the early 1900’s when there was a massive 18 month strike and conditions and safety were finally improved. This tour was a fascinating experience and well worth a visit.
Our next stop was Jack Absalom’s gallery. He is a well known artist and TV presenter and paints the most amazing outback pictures. To our delight Jack appeared and we all had our photos taken with him in front of his paintings

Next a coffee shop on top of the mine, overlooking the town. There was a lot of old mining equipment displayed outside which Brian loved.


A highlight for me was The Big Picture by a local artist, Peter Anderson, which is the world’s largest painting on canvas (12metres x 100 metres) covering a room in a curve of 190 degrees depicting a number of landscape scenes around the area. The centre timber area is designed to resemble a lookout and you actually feel like you are walking into the scene before you and the three D effect the artist has created is very clever. The room has been landscaped with shrubs and animals, aboriginal artefacts and rocks to depict the area.
This is an amazing exhibit. It is very creative and awesome to see.

Our last excursion for the day is to see The Living Desert & Sculptures 8kms out of town at sunset. We drove out and to visit an environmental and nature walk then drove up a rocky outcrop to the top of a hill where before us an array of rock sculptures have been built - one sculpture has a round donut on the side and you can line up the hole with the setting sun to obtain an amazing photo. The setting sun shines on the sculptures and create amazing colours of pinks and red on the stone. We all watched the sun go down until the glow of yellow, orange and red disappears and the peace of the outback evening pervades.



Back to the caravan for a quick change and off to the Democratic Social Club know as the Demo for a delicious dinner.
What a busy and successful day.