We settled on three days.
My husband had to be talked up gradually, from one, to two and finally to three days. Broken Hill, I had been reliably informed, was a place with much to see and do.
It hadn’t occurred to me to ask my daughter as the most seasoned traveller in the family about Broken Hill. She’s been to Paris, Rome, Chicago, Berlin, Greece, Turkey, China, New York, London and most places in between. I assumed that Broken Hill had slipped between the cracks (pun intended), but of course she’s been there.
Apparently she squeezed it in during her quick fly-in fly-out visit of most of Australia’s key places. Perth, Sydney, Cairns, Adelaide are all ticked and crossed off her must-see-everything-before-I’m-30 check list. Somehow, Broken Hill got fitted in as well.
She scoffed when I told her we were booked to stay there for four nights. After all, she’s seen Paris in less than that.
I told her the pile of dirt is one of the big attractions and while she might demean the experience, my friends tell me this is the place to sit atop at sunset.
I told her not to tell her thoughts to her father. She faithfully reported to him the idle joy in sipping a milkshake at the Broken Hill milk bar and hanging out at the pub where Queen of the Desert was filmed. My husband seemed unusually buoyed by the idea of the pub. He could even take a beer to the top of the dirt pile at sunset.
- Linda Muller
