City of silver linings
Big stars and local heroes in Broken Hill.
At Broken Hill’s Pro Hart Gallery, assistant Jayne Hartney straightens a painting. “I do this every day,” she says, explaining that two underground blasts, at 6.45am and 6.45pm, vibrate the Besser-block walls. “You can set your watch by them,” she says.
The earth never moves for me while I’m in the Silver City, where mining has reshaped not only the landscape — the defining feature is a sky-high mullock heap — but the local language. I ask Hartney if Hart was an A-grouper. “Who have you been talking to?” she says, surprised someone “from away” has heard of the classification once used to select which mine employees to lay off in lean times. These days, it’s a guaranteed conversation-starter. “He’s a solid A. He was born in Broken Hill and died in Broken Hill.”
This desert city was founded in the 1880s to exploit an extraordinary 7km-long, boomerang-shaped silver, lead and zinc deposit known as the Line of Lode. It’s a place that’s tough yet tender, brutal and creative, spawning luminaries such as soprano June Bronhill and actor Chips Rafferty.
West Darling Arts executive director, artist Cathy Farry (A-grouper), estimates about 50 artists are among the city’s 17,000-plus residents. Its artistic reputation, she says, dates from the rise in the 1970s of the Brushmen of the Bush, five largely self-taught artists, including Hart and Jack Absalom. “They hit the big time and helped get that story out that anyone can be an artist, that Broken Hill was a place that encouraged and nurtured it,” says Farry. Another factor is that “houses are really cheap and being an artist is quite renowned for not bringing in money”. Real-estate ads reveal you can snap up a two-bedroom tinnie (corrugated-iron miner’s shack) for as little as $49,000.
Art and industry intersect at Hart’s Big Ant sculpture, relocated to the corner of Beryl and Bromide streets from the Stephens Creek Hotel, one of the pubs out at “the 10 mile” where you could get a drink before Sunday trading arrived. For Hart, ants represented miners’ dedication and tolerance towards each other while underground. He worked in the mines as did John Dynon, another A-grouper. Known as the Emu Man for his caricatures of the big birds, Dynon now works at a studio-gallery in Silverton, a rollercoaster 25km drive from Broken Hill incorporating 39 stomach-flipping dips. Dynon couldn’t wait to leave the mines, especially after digging out two mates who died underground. “That scared me,” he says.
So no one ever forgets such tragedies, the Line of Lode Miners’ Memorial crowns the mullock heap. Retired mine engineer and inspector turned author, Stan Goodman (B-grouper, married to an A-grouper), shows me plaques that honour the 900 miners who have died here since 1886 (Goodman’s brother-in-law, Max Rose, is among them). The city is “quite incredible” at rallying around the grief-stricken, he says. “One of the reasons I still live here is that I like the camaraderie of the place,” he says. Goodman’s book, The Fatal Lodes, is available at the city’s Visitor Information Centre.
When Dynon was in mining, he drew only in black and white. Wife Debbie bought him paints and, after a single lesson from Absalom who was astonished at his talent, he picked up a brush and never looked back. Today, he’s one of the area’s most colourful characters. One of his stories, for instance, is about the time he chatted to a woman for hours in Broken Hill’s windowless Harley Club, with no idea it was his favourite actor, Nicole Kidman.
Broken Hill is the Hollywood of the Outback — appearing in Mad Max 2, Mission: Impossible II, Wake in Fright and many other movies — but the only stars I see sparkle above at Outback Astronomy. Beyond the city limits, next to an art deco building that once housed the Royal Flying Doctor Service, Linda and Travis Nadge (he’s an A-grouper; she’s from “away”, so a C-grouper) stage regular sky shows. Their big idea was to turn their “backyard hobby” into an intimate astronomy experience for all ages. I’m visiting under a waxing gibbous moon, which is too bright for the best viewing but I’m starstruck by what’s seen from my lounger and through two powerful telescopes. “It took a pandemic for people to realise the sky is worth looking at,” says Linda Nadge. “We’re so run off our feet. We’ve had so many people travel out to Broken Hill just because of the stargazing.”
More eye-squinting bedazzlement lurks within the Albert Kersten Mining and Minerals Museum. Display cases cradle mineral samples, a 42kg silver nugget and the 8.5kg Silver Tree once owned by Charles Rasp, the Syndicate of Seven member who pegged out the first mining lease here. Historic photos also reveal Broken Hill was no cultural backwater; cashed-up citizens were as fashion-forward as their big-city cousins. Rasp’s fellow syndicate member, George McCulloch, bought the grand painting Vae Victus! The Sack of Morocco by the Almohades. Following its donation to the Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery, it’s been attacked twice.
Outdoor art draws visitors to the Living Desert Reserve — home to 12 sandstone sculptures that glow like embers at sunset. One is Insta-famous as it appears to cradle the sun at certain times of the year. “I reckon they’re all good,” says former earthmoving contractor, miner and fencer turned park ranger Darrell Ford (“I’m a double A-grouper — I was born here and I’ll drop dead here”).
On South Broken Hill’s main drag, nostalgia is an art form. Patton Street is home to the 1950s-style Bells Milk Bar, which serves milkshakes and spiders in time-capsule rooms. Nearby is the Rudolph Alagich menswear store, where the late Rudi’s granddaughter, Nardia Keenan, wears top-to-toe vintage and sells women’s pin-up fashions. She’s also opened a vintage grocer in a hall adjoining South Broken Hill Hotel to help elderly residents who might struggle to reach supermarkets on the other side of “the heap”. Keenan not only sells local produce, soda syrups, quandong jam and home-baked cakes, but she’s sunshine itself. As one gent refuses her offer of bay leaves and others pop in to chat, it dawns on me she’s dispensing something all the earth’s riches can’t buy.
Katrina Lobley was a guest of Destination NSW.
In the know
Stay at a grand art deco pub such as the Royal Exchange Hotel, or splash out on the city’s most luxurious digs, Broken Hill Outback Church Stay in South Broken Hill. Outback Astronomy, northeast of the city, offers one double glamping tent; 7km further along the Barrier Highway is Broken Hill Outback Resort, with luxury spa cabins and camping and caravan sites surrounding the historic Mt Gipps Hotel.
brokenhilloutbackchurchstay.com
brokenhilloutbackresort.com.au
More to the story
Broken Hill is at its most fabulous during the annual Broken Heel Festival. The pandemic cancelled the 2020 celebration of drag culture but it will return September 9-13, 2021. The event celebrates the anniversary of the 1994 release of The Adventures of Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, partly filmed at the Palace Hotel, famous for its neck-craning murals. Tom Henderson regularly hosts karaoke and bingo at the Palace as Amanda Screetly, an alter-ego whose “desert diva” look is inspired by Dusty Springfield and Dolly Parton. He credits the movie for bringing “this whole new market” to Broken Hill. “An easy way to open the minds of people is by getting money involved. You can never underestimate the power of the pink dollar.”
