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Published: July 17th 2021
Today we head north to Broken Hill. Issy asks what towns we'll be going through along the way. The only name we can see on the map is the town of Scotia. It seems that "town" is maybe overselling it just a tad. The ever reliable Wikipedia shows it as being the size of a small African country, but with a population of 26. Armed with this new information and the knowledge that it's 300 kilometres to our destination, we decide that it might be wise to fill up with petrol before we head off.
We start to feel like we've really entered the outback. It becomes noticeably more arid as we proceed northwards, and the vegetation sprouting from the red dirt gets progressively shorter until it verges on the non-existent. The only sign of human life we pass along the way is Scotia's Coombah Truckstop, where we pause for a break. The local population has now presumably swelled to 28. The proprietor tells us that we'd better grab a seat while we can still get one. Huh? He says that a busload of tourists is about to descend. He tells us that their leader at least had the good
sense to warn him that they were coming so he could get supplies in, but then tried to bargain with him on the price of sandwiches and cups of tea. His response was probably a bit predictable - take it or leave it, and, by the way, good luck trying to find anywhere else to get a bite to eat.
As we near Broken Hill we both comment that we've yet to see a single kangaroo, emu, wombat or any other native animal since we left home. We'd heard that kangaroos have reached pest proportions in some parts of the country, and are being regularly culled. If our experience is anything to go by the culls must be going well. The only animals of any description we’ve seen since we left Mildura were a few goats wandering around in a paddock. We've run over a few cattle grids that made the car shake. We then noticed on closer inspection that the space underneath them had been filled in with bitumen, so other than waking up the odd sleepy passenger they're not really serving any useful purpose. This leaves us wondering a bit what farm animals are being run out
here on what looks like an endless expanse of fenced paddocks. We pass a few signs pointing to large sheep and cattle stations, but actual animals seem to be in very short supply. We've got no radio reception, so we haven't heard any news today. The road did feel a bit lonely and creepy, so hopefully there hasn't been an alien invasion or some other catastrophe in the few hours since we were last in civilisation. On reflection this seems just a tad unlikely, and we're encouraged to see some at least relatively healthy looking human beings as we approach the town's outskirts.
The previously featureless horizon has now been replaced by a series of hills, most of which seem to have completely flat tops. We begin to wonder whether this has got something to do with the town's name. The hills do indeed look broken, in that they appear to have had their tops lopped off. I'd always assumed the town's name was derived from a hill being broken when mining started here. In that case the hill wouldn't have been broken before the mining started, so I wonder what it was called then - Unbroken Hill, or
maybe just Hill. I think hours of uninterrupted driving through relatively featureless terrain may have impacted on my thought processes, so I resolve to consult the Google machine later to get a more sensible take on the derivation of the town's name.
We drive down the main street. First impressions are that there seems to be a pub on virtually every corner, and most of them have spectacular wraparound balconies adorned with wrought iron lacework. Virtually all the streets seem to be named after metals or minerals - Cobalt, Oxide, Mica and Silica Streets, to name just a few. One of the flat topped hills dominates the skyline, and its base looks like it's only a block or so away from the main drag. It seems on closer inspection that all these hills are in fact man made mullock heaps, which rather puts paid to my earlier theories on the derivation of the town's name. There's also no shortage of the iconic mining headers that I'd always associated with outback towns. It all feels very authentic.
We check into our accommodation, which is a cabin about 15 kilometres out of town. It has a large deck which looks
out onto hills of red dirt. If we didn't feel like we were in the outback before, we do now.
We head into town and stop at the Pro Hart Gallery. Kevin "Pro" Hart was an iconic Australian painter who passed away in 2006. We read that he was raised on a sheep farm in nearby Menindee, and then worked in the mines before becoming a full time artist. He was virtually entirely self taught. He was apparently renowned for a being an inventor in his younger days, and the name Pro was a contraction of his early nickname of Professor. The works on display are stunning - colourful, and with a very distinctive style, and mostly represent life in the outback, in the mines, and in and around Broken Hill. Hart sounds like he was a fairly interesting character; apart from his artistic talents he was also apparently a well known conspiracy theorist. He had a strong distrust of mine managers, which comes to the fore in a lot of the art work. Miners are often represented as having no heads, as in his opinion most of the overseers regarded them as being little more than anonymous slaves. The overseers themselves are then often shown wearing masks to characterise them as being two-faced and not to be trusted. Religion was apparently a constant in the middle and later stages of his life, and quite a few of the art works have religious themes. I'm fairly sure he wasn't Catholic. Two of the paintings on display seem to be having a not so sly dig at Catholicism's love of large churches with giant skyward reaching towers. Cardinals, bishops and other high ranking religious officials are depicted smashing through the church roof and clambering up its tower with their congregation following close behind. It seems Mr Hart didn't think that this was likely to be a particularly effective means of getting closer to God. Other works have attempted to capture the pain of the Crucifixion. Prints for sale include Hart's iconic dragonfly on a large piece of carpet, which he produced largely by shooting paint out of a mini cannon. This was featured on a television advertisement for stain proof carpet about thirty years ago. His cleaning lady was shown coming in with a horrified look on her face, and uttering the now iconic words in a strong Italian accent, "Oh, Mr Hart, what a mess". She then proceeded to remove all traces of the masterpiece from the carpet, thus demonstrating that it was indeed stain proof.
We head ten kilometres west of town to the Living Desert Reserve and arrive just in time for sunset. The main attraction is twelve sandstone sculptures produced in 1993 by artists from around the globe. They're on top of a hill, and look particularly spectacular against a backdrop of the setting sun.
Back at our cabin, if we needed any further reminders that we're in the outback they come in the form of no phone reception, no wifi, and frequent interruptions to the power supply. We're certainly not complaining; it all feels totally in keeping with the experience.
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Dancing Dave
David Hooper
Outback Quiet
Great blog...can feel the silence and sparsity of wildlife as you travel. Makes one wonder why.