Mad Max Country

Australia’s outback is always fascinating. Long distances through ever changing scenery, small towns some with only a pub and a general store, others with a life and soul of their own despite their isolation.
Fascinating people can be found along the way and we met one of these today when we stopped at a roadhouse for coffee at the small outback town of Yunta. He was a truckie from Kununurra named Barry, a friendly guy who took a shine to Chanel. He took us of a story about a dog from Kununurra who was going to be put. down but was bought by someone who lived in Perth, so this truckie agreed to take him in the truck cab to Perth. Along the way his trucking schedule changed due to the floods and instead he drove more than 20,000km in the next 4 weeks around Australia with this dog until he finally got back to Perth. The ABC did a TV article on this story which he showed us:
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-27/abandone…
A really interesting character to meet over a coffee in the middle of nowhere.
Today we headed inland towards one of Australia’s most famous outback towns, Broken Hill, also known as Silver City. With a history going back to the 1880s and being the birthplace of Australia’s largest company BHP this city has a lot to offer the tourist.
So as the kilometres ticked by we looked forward to a short 2-night stay that would give us a taste of this town.
Researching what to do at each place we visit really is the key to a successful trip. But sometimes the details slip through the cracks. Today we found out when we arrived at Broken Hill that one of the main attractions, Silverton, is almost totally closed on Mondays. Our plan for tomorrow, Monday, was to spend half a day seeing the sights and attractions of Silverton. So despite driving 400km we jumped in the car and drove another 30km to get to Silverton before they closed today.
Silverton looks like a town from an old western movie with lovely turn of the century buildings set in a real outback environment. As a result it has been used in a number of well known movies including Mad Max 2, Priscilla Queen of the Desert, A Town like Alice, Wake in Fright, Razorback, just to name a few.
We had 45 mins to go before the Max Max 2 Museum closed so this was our first stop. Movie memorabilia including a large number of vehicles used by Mel Gibson and others was on display. The Silverton Hotel was heaving with people for the Mother’s Day Sunday Session. While having a couple of drinks there a herd of cattle trotted down the dirt road in front of the hotel to add that extra bit of country & western atmosphere. A mixture of odd colours decorated the John Dynon art gallery, and the wide flat horizon at the Mundi Mundi lookout showed off the outback very well.
Silverton was an interesting place aimed at the tourist. However on our last trip we spent a few days at Lightning Ridge which we felt had more to offer.
So after a long day it was back to Broken Hill for a Mother’s Day dinner at the Silver City Chinese restaurant. Tomorrow we will spend the whole day looking around Silver City.Read more