Broken Hill has been on my Bucket List for a long time, but not on John’s. I could sense he thought it was a long drive for nothing but he made sure we included it on our trip. I absolutely loved it and John seemed to enjoy himself too. He was right, it was a long drive, with very little to look at except desert, more emu families and wild goats. But it was a very relaxing drive.

We knew very little about Broken Hill other than it is a mining town in the middle of nowhere so we were curious about what it had to offer. In fact it had a lot to offer.

We camped at the Outback View Caravan Park and set off the next morning to check out the town. There was a time change we didn’t know about so we were out exploring earlier than usual. We began our tour at the Many Faces and Big Ant sculptures by Australian artist Pro Hart which he created as a tribute to the miners here.

Broken Hill reminded me a little of Kalgoorlie and Mount Isa, all being remote mining towns, particularly with the mine looming in the background as well as sculptures, artwork and old relics all around town. It is such an old town with beautiful historical buildings.

The Pro Hart Gallery was in town so we made our way there. Wow. It was great. His paintings were all around together with an amazing mural which I felt showed the ‘progress’ of Australia from First nations people living on country to white Australians mining it. There were examples of his other work in different mediums and a documentary about him. Until today I had never realised how controversial Pro Hart was and it was so evident in his art which we both loved. We spent ages in the gallery and then crossed the road to check out some more of his sculptures.

We dragged ourselves away and drove out to Silverton, 25 kms from town. What a quirky place this was. As the sign says it’s definitely an outback town! We had lunch at the bakery then wandered up to a couple of quite different art galleries including the John Dynan gallery.

Although neither of us are particularly Mad Max fans, having only seen the first movie in the series, we couldn’t resist having a look at the Mad Max 2 Museum which was housed in a shed. Even though it wasn’t really our thing, it was fun to look around and it probably inspired us to watch at least the second movie as we would recognise the setting.

We left the museum and drove a few kilometres to the Mundi Mundi Lookout where many of the scenes from Mad Max 2 were shot.

We ended our day with a drink at The Palace Hotel back in Broken Hill. This hotel is well known for its links to another film – Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Some scenes in the film were shot here – for example the scenes on stage – and both crew and actors stayed in the hotel during filming.

We had such a great day! A huge tick off my bucket list and so worth the long drive.