I left Sydney on 24 April, overnighted in Nyngan and arrived into Broken Hill on Anzac Day. I met my mate Geoff in Broken Hill – we’d planned 10-11 days for an outback experience.
We had quite a bit of expectation about the place… A few friends had visited and had talked the place up. Why exactly?? I decided that they made such an effort to get there, and that they needed to talk it up – so everyone didn’t know that they’d made a mistake going there. But let’s not pour cold water on what might be a wonderful location for some people. It was better than, say, Nyngan. Or Lithgow.
Perhaps the experience wasn’t helped by the fact I contracted a bug. How unfair is that? Two days in to a 2 year adventure and I get sick?? I tested a day or so later – it was Covid.
I did enjoy one place. Silverton is where they filmed Mad Max. It all sounds a little glitzy, but far from it. We met 3-4 fantastic groups of (nice) ‘different’ people who for some reason thought that moving from (in one example) Hull in the UK to settle 10km out of Broken Hill to manage a Mad Max memorabilia museum was the perfect lifestyle decision… Well, from their sheer joy and happiness, I wished I’d thought of doing it first. The pub was fantastic – better even. But the whole vibe was one of a celebration of people finding real and intense happiness – in the oddest place you could think to find it. But the people were real – and they lived with real happiness and joy.
Another highlight was the Mundi Mundi lookout. I’ll drop a couple of sunset pictures in here, but the one at the top of my home page is from Mundi Mundi. I’ve seen lots of sunsets. This was staggeringly good – looking west across the expanse of the Australian outback.
Perhaps I could grudgingly admit the Broken Hill Sculpture Park was worth a look… If only for the dramatic back drop of the wild outback offsetting some interesting pieces of art. The rest…?? Well, maybe it was just the Covid which coloured my views.