Last time I wrote, we were headed for the world-famous Australian outback. Well, here’s the second of the three in this series… (I’m still on the lookout for some outback roos. Will I find some? Keep reading!)
After 2 days in the car, and one and a half of my knitting projects done, we finally pulled into Broken Hill. I had questions that were haunting me, and I wanted some answers. Is there really a hill that was broken, and if so where was it? Who broke it? How long has it been broken? Why hasn’t it been fixed after all this time? (I’m guessing it’s a government job) If I climb to the top of this hill, will I be considered king of it?
To get all these answers, we headed off to the information building, and spoke with the information lady. Seems she had answered these questions before, because she had all kinds of answers for me right away, without having to look up any of the information.
It seems that the original “broken hill” was actually a number of hills that appeared to have a break in them. These broken hills no longer exist, having been mined away. The city of Broken Hill known as the capital of the outback, and is Australia’s longest-lived mining city. It had a massive ore body, (which by the way, in true Aussie fashion, is shaped like a boomerang) and was formed about 1,800 million years ago. As it turned out, this ore body proved to be among the world’s largest silver-lead-zinc mineral deposits.
Even though the mine isn’t being worked anymore, all of the structures are still there. 
This is what they call the line of load, and it’s nothing but the waste byproduct of mining. The two structures on top are open to the public, and have a gift shop (of course), a cafe (naturally), and a memorial for all the miners that lost their lives.
The town is pretty big for being out in the middle of nowhere. Gene’s old office is the one story office building on the left with the big white roof.
Even though it’s the desert, they do have their own dam for their water supply. There has been a ton of rain, so the lake is full.
Once you get out of the city limits, you are back to desert. So here I am, in the Aussie outback. I finally made it.
Even though we were in the middle of the outback, Gene took me to the Menindee Lakes. Now keep in mind that Australia has some rather strange type of lakes. Some of them will totally dry up and stay that way for years. When the rains finally come, when it rains long enough, they will fill up, and be that way for quite a few years.
Here out in the middle of the outback is this beautiful lake. It’s Huge! Not a Great Lake, but still pretty big.
You can tell where the old water line was by the ridge of trees that are still growing there. We were there in winter, and the trees are dormant, so no green on the living trees.
The lake has a very sandy bottom with no rocks of any kind. I’m sure this lake gets used a lot when it’s warmer.
One attraction that is around Broken Hill is the living desert sanctuary. In 1993, artists from around the world came to Broken Hill, and made 12 sandstone sculptures that are supposed to tell a story. Not being one that can read sandstone, for most of the sculptures I couldn’t understand what story they were trying to tell.
Looks like a plain ol’ regular rock to me.
This one had some kind of carving on it, but a lot of it was worn away.
One good thing is they were close to each other.
This is it is supposed to be the sun and the moon, and is considered the most famous of all these sculptures. This is the image they use on all the brochures about Broken Hill.
Here’s Gene reading about what I thought was just another sculpture. It turned out to be a survey marker. Leave it to a retired road and bridge engineer to find something like this out in the middle of nowhere.
Now this one I got! Seeing how this is a horse’s head, I am positive that this is in honor of The Godfather…..
Next time we continue to see more of the outback, and get to check out a place that was immortalized in film!
American Aussie 