The Slow Reveal

Having lunch at a corner table in a beautiful restaurant with floor to ceiling glass, we look out at the scene before us - railway lines, sheds, earth moving equipment and giant piles of rubble. Not the scene we would normally find appealing, but today, it is perfect. This is Broken Hill.

Its appeal seems to creep up on us. It’s a big country mining town - or is it a city? We’re not sure, but it has the feel of a large town, so we decide that’s what it is. It has wide streets lined with beautiful old buildings that have, along the main street and the Heritage Trail, been maintained, but along less visited parts been left to grow old without care and in some cases shut down and bordered up. The latter become sad echoes of the town’s better days, but the new gift shops, small art galleries and renovated corner hotels are reminders that it now caters very cleverly to the tourist trade.  And so it should. We suspect that every visitor finds something different in Broken Hill.

It’s not a ‘pretty’ place to visit but it’s striking and honest and becomes mesmerising the longer we’re here. It is certainly proud of its heritage and that is what draws us in.

Looming over the town is the Line of Lode, paraded in guide books in the glorious orange glow of sunset.  During the day, it is less romantic, a mass of greys, charcoals, ochre, black and all the other colours of this broken earth – which is an apt name for the restaurant and visitors centre that sits atop it and where we now have lunch.

It’s strange driving up to the Broken Earth centre, along a rough edged road that winds its way through tailings and past falling down structures that look ready to fall further. The centre has won architectural awards and we can see why. It is stunning and reaches upward to the sky, away from the earth. Pointing towards the future? Celebrating Broken Hill as a living entity? Near it is the Broken Hill Memorial  which from a distance looks like a series of rust coloured mining buckets or trailers joined together. Together the two buildings represent the past and the future.

I am unprepared for my own reaction as I enter the memorial, confronted with lists of names and dates of miners who have died here, the youngest being 12 and the latest death being in 2007. It moves me far more than any war memorial I have visited, no doubt because I am in the place where these people died.

I wonder later how many aboriginal people have suffered and died because of the occupation and mining here, but for now, I am involved in the experience of what is presented to me.

I look out from our lunch table and see more than just the rubble and cold grey colours. I see the shops and houses of Broken Hill, its grid of streets and beyond to the mines and plains that stretch on forever.  It is such an isolated place and perched up here I get a very real sense of that.

I read a guidebook that said that you can never get a true a sense of Broken Hill until you know its history. In many ways, the memorial to the miners has done that, but I still wait for the history before the white man and there doesn’t seem to be a great acknowledgement of that. 

Our trip to The Living Desert and to the Sculptures there give a different perspective, not just for an understanding of the connection between art and the environment, but for recognition of the importance of the land to its traditional owners. I am left wanting more.

But for more recent history, we try a little trek out to Silverton, with its “classic outback look”. It's interesting trying to imagine the town as it once was, with 5,000 people. We tour the museum housed in the old gaol, where the maintenance man at our motel has told us ‘there’s a lot of ancient shit’ and he’s right. There is. We walk the wide streets and marvel at how much of the town has disappeared with so few ‘ruins’ to show. (Jon loves his ruins)

 The town prides itself on its film history, as does Broken Hill. A new breed of tourists is catered for. Popular culture creates a new breed of tourists, not interested in the town’s past so much as its filmography.

But listen to me....I have only been in Broken Hill for a day and a half! I know I need to stay longer to discover more, as already I am finding holes in my previous statement that the town is proud of its heritage. Who selects the heritage?

Two days later when we drive through the tiny town of Collarenebri on our way to Moree, we stop at a park for lunch. A huge sign explains how the town got its name, which Aboriginal people  live there and why the town is an important site for them. It lists many sites and artefacts and explains their significance.

On reading this, I understand more fully what I missed out on in Broken Hill.