Day 4. Broken Hill - First 1000kms up 15/05/2015

Had to rise earlier than we have been the past few days as we were to be picked up here at the park for our  City and Highlights Tour leaving at 8.30am.  Another sunny day with a fresh wind blowing making it quite cool.
Drove through the city centre all the while having the view of the Line of Load in our sights. The Line of Load is 7.5 kms long and is 1.6 km deep  so it is a massive vision. The tour driver gave us many details about mining in Broken Hill, starting with B.H.P. in 1883, and until 1939 when they discontinued mining. There have been many companies mining and  still to this day there are a number of overseas companies mining in Broken Hill.  After more than 130 years, 300 million tonne has been mined in Broken Hill making it one of the longest continual mining towns in the world.
We stopped at a very old mine named Junction Mine that had first been pegged in 1884.
We then inspected the Miners Memorial an impressive site high up on the Line of Load dedicated to the 800 Miners who have lost their lives up to the present time.  Of those 800 only two bodies have never been retrieved.
We were then taken on an extensive tour of the city to include historical points of interest such as hotels, homes of Chips Rafferty our first movie star and June Bronhill a very famous singer who had enormous success here and overseas.   We also saw the Cemetery that has the first grave dated 1889 and there is now 60,000 graves.  Of course there are many famous people buried there. The tour took 4 hours and it was wonderful and thoroughly enjoyed by all on the bus.
After lunch, John and I drove ourselves to the Pro Hart Gallery, another fascinating point of interest and we were so impressed.  Interestingly, Broken Hill has more Galleries than Hotels.  We then called in to Silver City Mint and Art Centre a must see in town.  The centre housed The Big Picture.  It is the world's largest painting on canvas and is 100 metres long and over 12 metres high and was painted with nine tonne of paint.  It took the artist Peter Anderson (Ando) 2 years to paint.  The canvas features natural and man made landmarks and is viewed by walking onto a timber viewing platform which is surrounded by the painting.  It is simply awesome!
There is so much to see here in Broken Hill we are so pleased we put it on our itinerary.
After our drive to town this afternoon we have just hit the 1000 kms mark so only 19,000 to go!