Part four of our trip to the NSW outback town of Broken Hill. In this post we visited the Line of Lode Miner’s Memorial and the border with South Australia…
Line of Lode
One thing that stands out in Broken Hill is the Line of Lode Miner’s Memorial. It stands atop the huge slag heap just behind the railway station and splits the town into the north and (newer) south sides. You can see it from almost everywhere on the outskirts of the town.
At the top of the slagheap the Line of Lode Miner’s Memorial is a walk through wall of remembrance to those who died working in the mines while making the area rich. Over 800 miners lost their lives working in the Broken Hill mines.
While the miner’s memorial is both sobering and dramatic, the views across the town from up here are also dramatic.
Roos – Dead or Alive
We never saw many kangaroos. I expected to see more having seen so many from the train window. One day, early evening, we headed off to the outskirts of town looking for emus. I had seen them from the train also but no luck near the town. However, we did see live kangaroos and then a dead one. In fact it was a skeleton of a kangaroo and we almost fell over it by accident.
It just shows, life is tough out here folks!. Rather than being scared Dani wanted to take one of its bones. I took a couple of photos but I drew the line at that request.
On the way to the Border
On the way to the NSW border with South Australia there is an interesting site that most people probably pass without even knowing it is there. It is a huge solar power station and shows that this old fashioned mining town is as up to date as anywhere.
Broken Hill Solar Plant is run by a company called AGL and has a 53 Mega Watt capacity. In simple terms that means it can produce enough electricity to meet the needs of 22,000 average Australian homes each year.
They have a viewing platform but guess what? Yep! Closed! That bloody covid crap again…. Fortunately you get to appreciate how many solar panels there are when returning to Broken Hill from the border. At times it looks like a huge wall then, if the sun catches it right, it looks like a large lake. Clearly in this region they have both the sun and the space to build more of these power stations.
En-route to the South Australia border we stopped when something caught my eye. Many places in towns and cities now have little boxes or cabinets at the side of the street where you can take an old book – and generally leave one for someone else to read. Street libraries I believe they call them. Well this thing was officially calling itself a ‘Bush Library’.
An old fridge painted bright pink in the middle of nowhere? We had to take a closer look. Sure enough there were books inside… Needless to say we both thought it was amusing.
At the Border
The border with South Australia is about 50 km from Broken Hill. The sign may say “Welcome to South Australia” but I do not think people from NSW were in fact welcome at all. Maybe now they are but a month or so back it was still on covid-1984 rules. If you are from NSW keep out.
There is a police station just inside South Australia (behind the sign) but nobody there (it seemed) and traffic – particularly lorries – was passing between the two states frequently enough (for these parts).
The Border Gate Cafe is another one of those famous landmarks that is often used in films and TV commercials.
Just behind the Border Gate Café is the railway line that links the two states. Although at the time no trains were passing this stretch of track…
The railway line into South Australia
We had a little drive into South Australia and turned back. It would have been great to drive all the way to Adelaide but we just didn’t have the time…