Broken Hill/Silverton, April 8^th & 9^th, PT 175 (Pictures)

Easter was a very long trip through Burra, Yunta and Cockburn, to the South Australia/New South Wales Border for us. We ate lunch in a small town whose main attractions were some metal figures assembled in a field nearby by “The Tin Man”. We bypassed our major destination, Broken Hill, and headed for a trailer park 25 K out in Silverton. Silverton revels in its barren environment. As a setting for Mad Max II and many other Australian movies that needed a touch of the really remote, it was perfect. An old mining town in its own right, it also sports an active Camel trekking enterprise that harkens back to the days when camels, and Afghanis to manage them, were the transportation of choice from the rich deposits of silver, zinc and other metals found here to smelters on the coast. The Silverton Caravan Park was suitably crude: corrugated sheet metal fences, cinder block toilet buildings, showers on a trailer, no laundry, no designated spaces, no lights, very few other campers and a generous dose of flies. The sunsets however were spectacular and the night sky expansive and sparkling clear.  In late September and early October it hosts the "Rock Fest", an event where fossickers come to camp and trade rocks for a weekend.

We decided to stay a couple of days to see the sights in both Silverton and Broken Hill. The next day we toured Silverton before we headed into Broken Hill. The first stop was Mundi Mundi Lookout. Its claim to fame is that it overlooks a 200 degree view of the outback, that reveals a very bleak landscape stretching to the horizon.

In “downtown” Silverton itself, we stopped at a little art gallery. Across the street was an old mud shack proudly displaying a “Sold” sticker over the realty company’s “for sale” sign. We browsed through the Horizon Gallery. Some paintings caught my eye because they were in a southwestern style but from an aerial viewpoint, much like those I use in mapping. They showed the serpentine wanderings of riverbeds. We met the artist, Albert Woodroffe. He asked us to visit him later in the day at his studio in Broken Hill. He explained that an old Aboriginal friend of his thought of the land as the body and the river as arteries.

On the way to Broken Hill, we made a brief stop at the camel outfitters. Being a little tight on money and time, we didn’t take a ride, but it was tempting. Easter Monday is a holiday in Australia and we were wondering what would still be open in Broken Hill.