Broken Hill

As well as being directly on our route home, the town of Broken Hill is the ‘birthplace’ of my one and only employer (The Broken Hill Proprietary Co. Ltd or ‘BHP’) since I was 17 years old.  BHP was formed 132 years ago in 1885 and has since grown and spread across the globe to be, at the time of writing, the largest diversified mining house in the world. 

Having never stopped in Broken Hill to look around we went straight to the tourist information centre and grabbed some brochures describing a range of ‘Things to Do’ while in the neighbourhood.  We opted to do a self-drive tour of the town.  A ‘Point of Interest’ included in the tour was the site of the first BHP Office ever established which we duly visited.  Not much left anymore except for ruins of part of the fireplace chimney and a brass plaque saying who built it and when.  Don't know what I was expecting but it was something more than this...

All that remains of BHP's first office is chimney ruins and a small brass plaque

Feel free to Click to enlarge pic if you wish to read and get a few more details

With my pilgrimage to the birthplace of the ‘mothership’ now underwhelmingly complete we continued our explorations of the town which included plenty of mining history and monuments, the art galleries of some of the more well-known artists that call or called Broken Hill home, e.g.: Pro Hart, Jack Absalom, etc..  Also part of the tour was a visit to the Living Desert Reserve and the Sculpture Site that is within it.

Several sandstone sculptures on top of a hill in the Living Desert Reserve

 

12 sandstone sculptures were installed as part of a sculpture symposium held on the hilltop in 1993 by artists from around the world.  As with most art, some pieces made more sense or resonated better with me than others.  Being totally honest I must confess that a couple of them (maybe more than a couple) still just looked like blocks of stone standing on a hilltop - which is exactly what they are.  Score one point for logic, but zero for artistic interpretation!

After a few hours of driving around becoming geographically, historically and culturally aware we returned to our ‘campsite’ for the day which was actually a parking spot in front of the grandstand of the Broken Hill racecourse.  It turned out to be very nice, having green grass underfoot (not much of that to be found in Broken Hill), and sharing a drink and some nibbles with a couple of our neighbours of the day before turning in for the night.

Not the bush camp setting we were used to but the green grass was a nice change

In the morning we were woken by the sound of hooves and the snorting of horses in training during the cool just before dawn.  Now awake, I decided to get up and watch them pace around the dirt track and managed to snap a nice photo of the finishing post with the rising sun right behind it.



Mining Headframes form part of the Finishing Post at Broken Hill Racecourse

 

With our next overnight stop not very far away we enjoyed a leisurely coffee before hitching up the caravan once more and moving on.

The next episode of WTF? – Where are The Farrows? see us in the busiest ghost town (and location for quite a few movies) we have come across yet!