My wife and I went to Broken Hill in New South Wales a few years ago. We had heard and read so much about the place that we felt we just had to go and have a look for ourselves.
It’s the home of BHP (Broken Hill Proprietary Ltd), one of the largest companies in the world, not only in mining but with interests in all sorts of businesses, and employing about 62,000 workers. That is a lot of workers, not all of them employed at Broken Hill of course, especially as the actual mine there is now somewhat depleted. However, at one time it was the world’s greatest producer of lead, zinc and silver, and it still produces about 2 million tonnes of the precious metals every year! But the company owns and operates mines all over the world today, which is where the greatest bulk of employees are.
It’s quite a long dive from Melbourne, Victoria to Broken Hill, about 840 kilometers, or nine hours of steady travel in a car. It’s not the sort of trip to do in one day unless you absolutely have to. We didn’t!
We stopped off at a very nice and surprisingly smart motel in Mildura, right on the border with New South Wales, at the extreme north-west of Victoria. Our room had a large spa bath in it, something we’d never tried before, so we spent an hour or more wallowing in that, with the circulating pumps turned on, making the water rush all around us; a very new experience!
The next morning we set out from our ‘bathing-site’ and headed north into country that became more and more ‘outbackish’ with every kilometer we travelled. It’s another 300km to Broken Hill from Mildura and we were warned before we set out that there was only one roadhouse in the whole trip. We were advised to make sure we had a tank full of fuel and some snack food and water with us, because sometimes — depending on when we got there — the roadhouse could quite possibly be closed.
Thankfully it was open and we were able to stop and refuel, both us and the car! It was a low, somewhat unkempt building, surrounded by large water tanks (their only supply), and with a noisy old generator thudding away providing their only electricity and which the owner said he switched off every evening or he could get no sleep because of the noise!
One of the things that did distress us a little was the number of animal corpses all the way up the road from Mildura. We must have driven round, in order to avoid, at least a hundred kangaroos and emus before we got to the end of our journey, and apparently it’s like this every night to a greater or lesser degree. Very sad!
We expected Broken Hill to be a dusty, dirty sort of place, boasting streets very much like Hollywood’s view of the Wild West, with wooden shacks down each side, and raised wooden sidewalks, but we were surprised, and delighted, to find a really attractive town. It had nice buildings and wide streets and most of the major national stores in evidence too, all reminding everyone of just how wealthy the area is, due to the mine!
The whole town was bright and cheerful looking in the afternoon sun and everyone seemed busy and happy.
Broken Hill is split into two, with a gigantic pile of mine spoiling’s going right through the centre, I suppose because they were there first and the town then grew around them. We spent nearly a week there and thoroughly enjoyed the time we had. Not only did we get familiar with the town itself, but we travelled to the surrounding countryside as well, which was our first experience of genuine ‘outback’.
There was mile after mile of desert-like land, virtually no trees and as flat as a pancake, as far as the eye could see.
We visited Silverton, about 25km from Broken Hill, and it was hot, like standing in the centre of an enormous frying pan. There are only a few buildings there, with the main one being the pub. It was a square building with a square bar room and a square bar in the middle of that, so we could walk all round it, looking at the hundreds of photographs pinned on the walls, as we drank our ice-cold beers!
The Mad Max films were made at Silverton and most of the pictures were of that and the people acting and working on it. The pub also owned a three-legged dog of indeterminate breed, which hobbled about the place, making friends with anyone who was prepared to give him some of their time.
I’m really glad we took the opportunity to visit this wonderful icon of outback Australia, it’s a place where you get the real sense of what this country is all about, and of the fantastic people who make it all work.
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