Aussie Road Trip Day Nine Tuesday 23rd July

Going off the beaten track .......

It's been an interesting day. We had decided to drive to the nearby town of Silverton, some 25 kilometres from Broken Hill in the Western Barrier Ranges. This old historic town has been the location for many Australian films and commercials (think "A Town Like Alice" and "Mad Max 2"), as it has gorgeous heritage stone buildings and wide dusty streets. These days it also has museums and art galleries. We were drawn by its purported charms

We set out on the Silverton Road, which is bitumenised but has 39 dips (and a few floodways) en route to Silverton. After bouncing through these unduly frequent dips in the road, a few kilometres before achieving our destination we saw a sign for the Old Daydream Mine. It was only a few more kilometres out of our way, or so we imagined, and we decided to turn off and have a look. Why not?

 



The road to Daydream mine

The road suddenly deteriorated into dirt and was severely corrugated. If you've ever driven on corrugated road you'll never forget the experience. Even modern vehicles with good suspension are severely tested, although I suspect large four wheel drives might fare better than we did in a small sedan. We crawled along the seemingly endless twelve (yep, twelve) kilometres to the Daydream Mine, trying to avoid the worst of the bumping, through two chained gates and a couple of dry creek beds.



 

John at the Daydream mine cafe

At last we arrived, just in time to join a group of other tourists in a guided underground tour of the silver mine.

Barb getting kitted up to go underground



We donned hard hats and headlights and were given a briefing of the dangers by our guide, Henri.








John in the mine


Some parts of the tour involved almost crawling through passages four feet high, hence the need for helmets. I cracked my hat on the roof several times. It was actually really interesting and our guide knew his stuff. It gave a real sense of what it must've been like to wield a pick and shovel mining in those harsh conditions.





Roameo goes underground

Luckily we were rewarded with a lovely cuppa seved in tin mugs and freshly baked scones with jam and cream at the end. John said the loos were very primitive and rather grubby (BUT I did say I'd seen worse - in Egypt many years ago), so I decided to wait until we got to Silverton. We timed the return trip on the dirt road. It took us 39 minutes to go the twelve kilometres!

The dry creek beds we had to cross

I did say DRY



Easy to see why the charming hotel features in movies and ads

The Silverton Hotel was indeed a picture, and looked very Wild West.













John orders drinks at the pub

A very extensive old doll collection

Inside the bar was warm and cosy being warmed by an open fire, but was so small there was nowhere to actually eat the food we'd ordered. After shivering on the verandah outside for a while we chose to go and sit on the stools at the bar and await the departure of other patrons and then swoop on their table.

















Cashing in on Mad Max2
John declined to pay $7.50 to go in

 







John at the Old Fashion Museum









Art Gallery in Silverton

 

Pro Hart's Rolls Royce collection


After walking around Silverton and examining a couple of its art galleries and a lovely old doll museum, we decided to also try to squeeze in a visit to the Pro Hart Art Gallery back at Broken Hill.

I really enjoyed this. It had three levels full of his work - he was a very prolific artist! It also showed a video about his life and work.



He was originally a miner here in Broken Hill before he became known in the art world and could retire from mining to focus on his painting. I didn't realise he died of motor neurone disease.

We feel we've done a lot in Broken Hill. It's been good to stop for a while in one place and just take in the sights. If we ever do a bigger road trip we'd need to take lots more time. Australia's such a big country it takes ages just to get to the next place.