Day 4 Silverton

 

I woke up to this this morning,The photo doesn't do it justice the colours were quite intense.

 

The plan was to spend the day in Broken Hill on Sunday, then before we left on Monday spent a few hours out in Silverton.  For some reason we ended up going out to Silverton, Sunday morning. 

Silverton is a little town about  25km from Broken Hill, population is less than 60. Following the discovery of silver and lead it was proclaimed a town in 1885 at it’s peak the population was 3000.  As Broken Hill’s larger mines were established Silverton fell into decline.  The municipal Chambers ceased operation in 1899 leaving Silverton under the control of the NSW Government.  With building materials in short supply many of Silvertons buildings were transported to Broken Hill on jinkers, pulled by teams of camels or bullocks.  That is the reason there are so few buildings remaining today.  These days Silverton is managed by the Silverton Village Committee , the town has many art galleries and is a popular destination for movie and commercial locations.  Mad Max 2 , A town like Alice, Pricilla, Queen of the Desert .  Mad Max 4 is going to be filmed there but was postponed for a few months as the surrounds was too green with all the rain they have had.

First stop was the Mad Max Museum

 

 

 

They had the most amazing collection of photographs, thousands of them, original and replica costumes and memorabilia  Unfortunately . We weren't allowed to take photo’s inside the museum.  The owners kindly posed for a photo with us.  They were the nicest people.

Loved this old church, it has been renovated into a private residence.  It was built in 1886 and was the Catholic Church, St Carthage

 

 

Silverton School 1884 -1970

Courthouse and Memorial Youth Camp

Silverton Gaol

I really enjoyed visiting Silverton it was a really interesting place the museums in the school and gaol were fascinating.

After we left Silverton, we drove a few kilometers to Mundi Mundi lookout were you can see the curvature of the earth, fantastic view.  Then we went to the historic Day Dream Mine  which was discovered in 1882 and did an underground tour,  What a hard life those miners hard no wonder they didn't live to be very old.  I wanted to go to the Sculpture Symposium which is a short drive out of Broken Hill to take some great photos of the sun setting on the Sculptures, we left it a bit late we got there just in time however then the sun decided to go behind a cloud and didn't get the photo’s I had hoped for.

 

I would recommend  a visit to Silverton, well worth the drive out there. We were so tired and had planned to stay at a  caravan park but was unable to so we drove about 30km out of town and parked at a rest stop so we decided not to head back the next day but to keep going.  Hopefully we will get some time to call in on the way home.