#brokenhill — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #brokenhill, aggregated by home.social.
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Broken Hill in the Living Desert
In this post: The city of Broken Hill, how it got its name, and the living desert that surrounds it. Plus some desserts.
This is the blog of Mark Wordsworm, the travelling worm. I’m a 40-year-old bookmark (give or take a few years) and I proudly boast my own Hallmark serial number, 95 HBM 80-1. You’ll probably want to read all about me and my Travelling Companion (the TC).
Today’s travel notes
Me and the TC recently made a big trek westwards from Sydney, to explore parts of NSW and South Australia. Broken Hill was one of the places on our bucket list.
The book I’m in
The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers. I’m nestled in near the start of this book, getting to know the characters and the situations they manage to get themselves into. So far, it’s a warm and amusing experience.
Travel tips
Take an early morning stroll in the living desert, but make sure you don’t get lost. It’s big country: Large landscapes, rolling hills, and a lot of sameness.
Recommended restaurants and bakeries
The Silly Goat is excellent for brunch. Their sweets looked scrummy, though we didn’t endulge this time.
The Musicians Club provides a good nosh-up for dinner. Their citrus tart is a delicious dessert.
The Deli presented us with delicious, gluten free cakes, a little like muffins.
The photos
Me at the top of the Line of Lode (it’s a mine dump), with the city of Broken Hill spread out below:
Why the name “Broken Hill”? The city is named after a range of ragged rocky outcrops that looked as if it had a break in it. The broken hill itself has since disappeared. It turned out to contain the world’s largest ore seam of silver lead, and zinc. After the resulting mining spree, the hill is now a large flat mine dump, part of which is still being mined.
The mine dump is called the Line of Lode. Let’s put on our wings (this worm is still patiently awaiting the day that I morph into a beautiful winged creature) and zoom some distance away from Broken Hill. This shot shows the Line of Lode and the city:
Due to the wealth of silver, zinc, and lead in its rock, Broken Hill became a bit of a trend setter in mining matters. Mining revenue supported the new nation of Australia in no small way. The mining and minerals technology developed in the city were adopted worldwide, as were many of the financing practices. Some of today’s large mining companies owe their beginnings to the miners at Broken Hill. Take BHP Billiton for example: BHP comes from the company’s former name, “Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited”.
The Line of Lode is part museum, part working mine. Derelict structures greet you as you make your way to the top:
Erected on top of the Line of Lode is a memorial to the miners who contributed so much to the city and the country. More than 800 people have died during mining activities here. The memorial shows names of deceased miners in columns lined with dusky pink roses, along with each person’s date and manner of death. This photo shows but a few of the names. The list stretches for several more panels:
The city of Broken Hill
The Line of Lode looms large from the city too. On Sulphide street, the 30-metre high mullock (an Australian term for a hill of mining waste) lurks behind the Palace Hotel:
The streets in the city are named after the ores mined and the chemicals used in the mining process. Here’s Argent Street:
The Broken Hill Courthouse is also on Argent Street:
Several areas in the city are designated alcohol free zones, in a bid to improve public safety. In these areas, it’s illegal to consume alcohol 24 hours a day, 7 days a week:
A big ant prowls Crystal Lane. This impressive creature is part of the pavement art created for the “Beyond The Dust” festival in 2025:
Above the streets, Corellas lurk. Like this one, which looks like a somewhat jaded reveller with its soiled feathers and splodged eye shadow:
Living Desert State Park
Twenty minutes’ drive from Broken Hill, along Nine Mile Road, is the Living Desert State Park. We were lucky to see the desert even more alive than usual, due to the unusual amount of rain the region has had over the past several months. The desert was covered in green shrubbery, even outside the park.
The park itself is well worth a visit. The entry fee is $10 per person, payable at an automated pay point beyond the gate. The payment system is eccentric. It’s unmanned, just a machine, and accepts card only. When we arrived, there were a few confused people wandering around looking for help. Eventually, by group effort, we all made it through the system and into the park.
Video: It’s mid morning in the Living Desert State Park. Several kangaroos bound across a bowl-shaped valley below us:
The next video shows more kangaroo action, later in the day. It’s approaching sunset. Two kangaroos tap each other playfully with their paws. Being but a small worm in a large world, I’m not sure what type of kangaroo or wallaby these are. They’re reddish in colour, with rather endearing tufty hairstyles:
As the sun goes down, sculptures make interesting shapes at the top of a hill in the park:
We left Broken Hill early next morning, driving into the sunrise:
That’s all for today, folks.
#australia #bookmark #bookworm #brokenHill #livingDesert #newSouthWales #travel #travellingWorm #travelog #travelogue -
Broken Hill pays homage to champion of outback’s Silver City Cinema
The outback town of Broken Hill and its surrounds in far west New South Wales are the backdrop…
#NewsBeep #News #Entertainment #AU #Australia #Australianfilmindustry #BrokenHill #cinema #film #Independentcinema #JohnWren #MadMax #regionalcinema #SilverCityCinema
https://www.newsbeep.com/au/715628/ -
"Watch Peter #Drew’s award-winning 2017 short film #BrokenHill"
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and because #heatwave is not enough NSW now also had a #duststorm :blobgrimace: #outback #brokenhill
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-01/outback-nsw-hit-by-massive-red-duststorm/106292772
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New at my Patreon... On an excursion from the Indian Pacific train in Broken Hill, we were presented with a lone meringue and a cornucopia of native fruits and sauces made from native ingredients, and were invited to go crazy with them in creating our own individual pavlova. Here's the result:
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Don't tell anyone!
"Environment watchdog buried report on lead in children’s blood to placate mining companies, emails show. Instead of taking action to protect babies and young children from toxic lead exposure, government officials have tied themselves in knots to protect a dangerous industry."
"The New South Wales environment watchdog sat on a report for four years linking elevated levels of lead in children’s blood to current mining, and promised mining companies they would not do any “finger-pointing”, new documents tabled in state parliament show.
>>
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/sep/05/environment-watchdog-buried-report-on-lead-in-childrens-blood-to-placate-mining-companies-emails-show"Lead exposure
can have serious consequences for the health of children. Exposure to very high levels of lead can severely damage the brain and central nervous system causing coma, convulsions and even death. Children who survive severe lead poisoning may be left with permanent intellectual disability and behavioural disorders."
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/lead-poisoning-and-health
#Pollution #children #lead #HeavyMetals #neurotoxins #health #harm #NSW #EPA regulation #BrokenHill #NSW #mining #extractivism #governance #DelayDeny -
@tregeagle Traveled through that part of the country in May and was astonished at how many feral #goats there are. At that time of the year it was stripped of anything green on the ground and up to about 1.5m in the trees and bushes. A modified and sad landscape.
#ecology #BrokenHill -
Interesting idea. Would have to improve the passenger rail service first - it currently gets one train a week, which returns to Sydney the next day. Not very useful for tourism.
#BrokenHill #nsw https://www.domain.com.au/news/outback-town-broken-hill-has-potential-to-be-australias-own-las-vegas-1356391/
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Et pour prolonger le plaisir Mad Max,
je vous recommande vivement de voir le superbe documentaire de Melvin Zed : Archeologist of the Wasteland★★★☆ 🤩
Un portait passionnant & amusant d'un archéologue des temps modernes.
✍️ La suite ici : https://www.senscritique.com/film/Archeologist_of_the_Wasteland/critique/250940466
#ArcheologistOfTheWasteland #Documentaire #Ozploitation #Film #Cinema #Australie #MadMax #MelvinZed #AdrianBennett #Silverton #BrokenHill
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One of my very first #PlainText journal entries:
2017-03-28, 11.00
On the train from #BrokenHill to #Sydney, an older gentleman approached my seat on the way back to his, and leaned in to have a word.
“I saw you typing back there," he said, “so fast! Are you typing a...?”
“Journal,” I said. “I’m making a journal record of my trip to see my Mum.” (1/3) 🧵
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Broken Hill in far west NSW set a new daily rain record on Sunday: 85mm recorded at the airport.
The previous single-day January record of 75.2mm was set in 1961.
#BrokenHill averages 27.7mm of rain in January, its wettest month, and the annual average is about 225mm. Local flash flooding, power and telecoms outage, but rain welcomed by pastoralists
#ExtremeRainfall #ClimateCrisishttps://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-01-08/record-rain-in-broken-hill-after-dry-spell/103292922
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if they can have a #sphere in the Las Vegas desert we can have a #sphere in the #BrokenHill desert :akko_fistup:
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Outback Xplorer at Broken Hill, ready to take me back to Sydney. The journey takes just over 14 hours to Sydney Terminal, but I'm alighting at Penrith in Sydney's western suburbs, so my journey will take 13 hours, 45 minutes.
Although Broken Hill is in NSW, it observes Central Standard Time, whereas the rest of NSW observes Eastern Standard Time. Broken Hill is closer to Melbourne and Adelaide than it is to Sydney.
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Arrived at Broken Hill only a few minutes late, despite something going "bang" under my carriage and the engine stopping. Hope they get it sorted for tomorrow's return run.
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How the discovery of outback #silver 140 years ago led to the establishment of #BrokenHill #australia #history
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I'm currently visiting the Outback town of Broken Hill. I'm doing some family history research and have thus visited the Cemetery (40 hectares (100 acres), ~45,000 internments). It appears that crushed glass (beer bottles?) is a popular ornamentation - I don't recall seeing that elsewhere.
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Maybe it is part of God's plan for it to happen ?
#brokenhill
#oldbuilding
#vandalismABC News: Doors, windows kicked in as Wesley Uniting Church in Broken Hill vandalised again https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-07-04/church-has-once-again-been-the-target-of-vandals/102556536
