Off the beaten track – Broken Hill Part One

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Geo: -31.9592, 141.467

Where would be a cheap place to go for 4 days which also has enough to see and do? How about Broken Hill? Seems like such an odd place to go to, and you would be mistaken for thinking that there wouldn't be much or anything.

4 days is a good amount of time to see all and do all.

But to experience all of this came at a small price, yes financially, but also mentally. I was setting off from Sydney, on the other side of the state. I had to endure a 16.5 hr trip to get here and then again to get back.

Sean and I had finished auditing the last few schools in the Hunter/Central coast area but the film was not ready and would not be ready till the following week, so we found ourselves with a free week. At first I thought that I would go to Cairns or maybe Tasmania but being pretty much school holidays and last minute, plane tickets weren't on the cheap side, so after bit of thinking, Broken Hill seemed like an interesting place to go checkout, 30 minutes later I had my transport booked.

Sean dropped me off in Sydney where I stayed at the Sydney Central YHA which is across the road from central station. This was a benefit as my train was due to depart at 7am.

I awoke to an orange sky staring at me through the dorm window. This was the dust storm that flew in from South Australia, later I found out that it was much worse here in Broken Hill where there were gale force winds and complete black skies.

Luckily I had bought a MP3 player in Melbourne because it was my saving grace in a very long and boring trip, but I eventually made it. It was quite amazing during the last few hours heading into Broken Hill, it was pitch black but there were congregations of kangaroos and deer's and even one cow scattered along a 200km stretch of road in which the bus driver did well to avoid hitting them, although there were some close calls.

The following day I decided to see the famous sculpture symposium which is 9 km to the North, for this I hired a bike from the YHA and treaded tar mach. apparently you need to pay $10 for a key to see the sculptures and reserve. Not knowing this, I was lucky. I rode along a Belgium woman to the site that had paid for a key so I just tagged along. The sculptures were cool but nothing too special, so a little sunburnt I made my way back to Broken Hill, grabbed a bite to eat, booked a white cliffs tour and then went to check out the local cemetery. The cemetery is pretty damn big for a small town, but I guess most are miners, seeing as there were a lot of old graves, it's also the resting place of "Pro" Hart, a famous artist.

The next day I had a 4*4 tour to a town about 3 hrs north of Broken Hill called White cliffs.

I got picked up at 8 in which the weather was a bit windy but was sunny, within 15 minutes the weather had completely changed and was almost covered the whole sky. It was a pretty amazing experience being in the middle of a dust storm, it was pretty mild to begin with but by the time we had to leave White Cliffs it got pretty thick and bad, backed up with gale force winds. There were points where we had to stop completely because we could not see anything in front of us. The storm wasn't as red as the previous dust storm a couple of days ago.

Anyway.....we finally made it to White Cliffs with a stopover in a town called Wilcannia. Now....Where to begin to explain white cliffs? In short it's a small town full of underground houses where people mine for Opals. It's a pretty baron place, so it becomes unbearable during the summer, but the houses underground are always 22 degrees.

Our first stop off was to visit a professional photography gallery by a resident who is the 65th best photographer in the world, this is verified by a photography magazine only given to those who made the top 100. Otto, originally from Germany, really did have some amazing shots, including photos from Antarctica. We then grabbed lunch and went to visit a very eccentric person called Jock.

Jock spoke loud and fast with some out there stories, but still entertaining in a way. We were given a tour of his house which is full of tunnels and old junk which were kept from when minors first occupied and mined the tunnels back in the 1800's.

We then went and saw the White Cliff underground motel which is like a maze with plenty of rooms and bathrooms, but very tidy and looks good. By the time we finished looking around the motel the weather had began to get worse. Our guide made a few calls to see if the roads were closed, and luckily for the older couple with us on the tour the roads were open because they had to catch a bus to Adelaide the following day. Had the roads been closed we would have had to stay at the motel, so i was looking forward and kind of hoping that we could stay but we didn't ...oh well maybe next time, there is unbelievably a primary school with 3 students which will have to be done for work so i might find myself back there, but I doubt it.

Unfortunately I think the dust got to my camera and I couldn't take photos so I didn't manage to get some photos, such as the house made out of beer bottles and Opal galleries.

It took a while to get back to Broken hill due to the dust storm being pretty bad, with only about 5 – 10 metres of visibility. But we safely made it back.

Well that's only two days and I still have 2 more days so I think I will do a second part to the Broken Hill blog. I plan to see some more of the local Broken Hill attractions tomorrow (Saturday) also try get my camera fixed because I am going to be hiring a car on Sunday and heading out to Silverton where mad max was filmed along other films. I will also be going to Mundi Mundi lookout and heading down south to Menindee Lakes

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