Heroes and artists.

Broken Hill was once one of the richest cities in Australia, it probably still is, as the mines are still producing. Consequently many of the buildings are quite beautiful, not least the Town Hall, built in 1890 in South Australian Italianate style, and the Post Office, from 1889, prominently placed on the corner of the main street.





 Just across the road is the Palace Hotel, one of 73 pubs and hotels from the late 1800s and one of the few that are still trading as such.A lovely building, the interior is decorated with murals and ceiling paintings that some may think would rival the Sistine Chapel!
 It was here that some of the scenes from Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, a cult movie, were shot.






Just outside the city, at the airport, is the largest base for the Royal Flying Doctor service. It is here that much of the aircraft servicing takes place, the furthest Beechcraft  in this picture has been  brought here from Tasmania. Each aircraft costs $7m, a propeller costs $40,000, so it is an expensive business keeping these birds in the air.
The service was started by the Rev John Flynn in 1928, who leased a fabric and timber bi-plane for two shillings a mile.






He also encouraged Alfred Traeger to invent the pedal powered raidio, which enabled people living in isolated stations to call for help, and indeed enabled the "School of the Air" to be established shortly afterwards.
Broken Hill RFDS serves an area larger than Britain, not only for emergencies, but doctors, dentists and nurses are flown out to small outback villages to take clinics on a weekly basis. They also fly transfers from local hospitals to the main hospitals in capital cities. In emergencies they often have to land on small gravel bush airfields or even roads to pick up patiemts.

For many years each station and village has had an emergency medicine chest that can be accessed in an emergency, in consultation with an RFDS doctor over the telephone. It is said that it is easier to talk to a doctor in the bush than it is to see one in a large city!
A lot of their funding comes from donations, and we have seen many events to raise funds as we have travelled around the country.


Later we visited a couple of art galleries, one showing the work Of Kevin (Pro) Hart, and the other that of an ex miner who paints in minerals by grinding them up and gluing onto timber. Many of his works are local scenes and buildings, and are really good considering his medium.




Just outside the city are the Broken Hill Sculptures, commissioned in 1993. A lonely hilltop, the haunt of wedge tailed eagles and wallabies, was chosen as the site and transformed into an artwork of international standing.
The artists travelled from all over the world to work on the 53 tonnes of sandstone erected on the site, which overlooks the city in the distance.
This one, of a horse head, was sculpted by a man from Tsibilsi, Georgia.









Others such as this one of the sun and the moon, were by an Aztec Indian from Mexico. The surrounding plains are quite beautiful, and we can well see why this site was chosen for these artworks.