Thursday 29 June

We started our day after a cold foggy beginning, by an exciting trip to the laundromat to dry the washing we had washed in the caravan washing machine. $4 and dry washing later and armed with some local knowledge from the lovely helpful woman working there, we visited Pro Hart's Gallery, where there are four of his collection of Rolls-Royces on display outside. Dubbed Pro (Professor) by his fellow school students, as he was a bit of a know it all (ummm...I know a few of those), he was a rather prolific painter, producing 70,000 paintings in his lifetime. I quite like his naive paintings, but his cannon fired stuff seems a bit " I think I could do as well " art, in my opinion.

From there we went  out to the Sculptures in the Desert, a collection of sculptures carved by twelve artists from five countries from 53 tonnes of sandstone brought here from the Wilcannia area in 1993.

Back in town we drove up to the Miners Memorial which overlooks the town from the original mine site, the Line of Lode. 800 plus lives have been lost on the job, and we read some of the causes of death - lead poisoning was a common one, crushing and septicaemia were also fairly common. Imagine, dying from a cut lip! I am so thankful we live in the era of penacilin and antibiotics.

We were a bit peckish by now, so we popped into The Palace Hotel for lunch, pumpkin soup for Rick and a delicious risotto for me. This hotel was initially built as a Coffee Palace by The Temperance Society in 1889, but it seems Broken Hill folk preferred something heavier, like most normal people in my opinion, so it became a licensed hotel in 1892. Mario  Celotto bought the Palace in 1974 and decided to paint Botticelli's Venus on the ceiling for some reason. Then he paid an Indigenous bloke for a number of years to paint nearly every other surface with murals. During the filming of Pricilla Queen of the Desert, the Hotel featured in a few scenes as well.

After a quick visit to the Silver City Art Centre and Mint (very commercial) we went back to the Race Track to our warm as toast van, as we had left the heating on to help dry some washing.

Rick being Rick, got the fire going in the communal fire pit and we sat for a while talking with fellow travelers before we were just too cold to stay any longer, so Rick became even colder cooking rissoles on the Webber for our tea. Then it was football time on TV, worse luck! So I did our blog while he ranted. Great night, hey? The Tour Leader needs to remember to choose destinations without tv reception on Thursdays and Fridays in future.