Once optimistically dubbed ‘Australia’s answer to Vegas’ and the iconic hometown of cult classics like Priscilla, Wake in Fright and Mad Max, Broken Hill’s reputation well and truly precedes it. For only about 10 hours on the road from Melbourne, the Silver City is worthy of a road trip.
Broken Hill sits on the edge of vast desert plains; in fact, the locals of Silverton, a short twenty-minute drive west of Broken Hill, will tell you that their local lookout at Mundi Mundi is one of only two places on the planet so vast you can see the curvature of the earth (whether this is local folklore or actual fact our we may never know).
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Broken Hill’s rich history in mining and unionism means the town tells stories of its own; the entire town is shadowed by the infamous Line of Lode; a hill of stone-like waste product generated by the local mine. But alongside the decaying mining infrastructure is its incredibly charming architecture; the main strip on Argent Street has barely changed since its gold-rush era shopfronts were first built and is home to more pubs than any road-tripper or even the locals could ever need.
First on your list when visiting the Silver City should be the most famous pub of the outback; The Palace Hotel. The Palace was built back in 1889 as a coffee palace, but by 1892 the owners were stone broke and decided to convert it into a hotel—and so The Palace Hotel was born. In the 1980s, owner Mario painted a mural of Botticelli’s Venus on the ceiling and challenged anyone who could match his painting abilities to paint another wall for the fee of $1000. Indigenous artist Gordon Wayne from Port Augusta agreed to the challenge and painted the wall in the front bar in less than 8 hours to show what he could do.
Mario loved his work, and Gordon ended up painting almost all the walls of The Palace over the years. Which remain intact to this day. Not only is the interior a sight to behold but The Palace also featured in the 1994 classic movie Priscilla, Queen of The Desert, and earned its name as the outback home of Drag. The main bar downstairs regularly hosts drag shows, as well as karaoke on Wednesdays. The entire pub is as beautiful as it is bizarre, and very much worthy of a well-deserved beer after the drive.
The main strip on Argent Street is filled with quirky cafes, shops selling leather goods, and again; more pubs. The Silly Goat Cafe is easily the most gentrified shop on the street, and it has all the Melbourne brunch classics you could need; they also make a mean smoothie. There are numerous museums; the old mining museum tells the interesting history of the town, and the art gallery is one of the best you’ll find in far-west New South Wales. You can drive over to the Junction Mine; an old and now unused mining building that also has killer views of the surrounding landscape. It’s especially stunning at sunrise and sunset.
For accommodation you can stay at the Palace Hotel itself which is very budget-friendly, and also allows you access to the incredible upstairs balcony with views across town and of the Line of Lode at the end of the street. The Imperial is a historic hotel on the edge of town that it’s apparently haunted, but also beautiful. If you’re visiting in any of the warmer months (most months of the year up here) and you’re looking for somewhere with a pool, the Lodge Outback Motel is a comfy, budget-friendly motel just a short walk from the main strip.
Once you’ve had a few days in town you can’t miss Silverton for a true outback experience. Silverton became a hotspot for silver mining in the 1880s before larger silver deposits were found in Broken Hill and the town was mostly abandoned. The town is very small with only a pub, cafe and Mad Max Museum; they shot the film just up the road from here and once they wrapped on filming a local towed all the things they’d left behind to create the museum. The pub (Silverton Hotel) has seen a colourful history; it’s featured in countless films and has been visited by endless celebrities, but despite this, it’s a modest and quintessentially Aussie pub with great pub meals.
The town is also home to four free-roaming donkeys; Jenny, Deggy, Jack and Jill, who’ll visit you while you’re eating dinner in hope of a feed of carrots. Silverton Hotel also has a recently-built motel out the back that’s some of the only accommodation you’ll find—unless you want to camp.
While in Silverton you can drive up the road to the aforementioned Mundi Mundi Lookout to see if you can see the curvature of the earth for yourself—it has killer views from up on the only hill around, where you can see hundreds of kilometres of flat red desert.
If you want to visit while the town is busy Broken Hill hosts the annual drag festival ‘Broken Heel Festival’ at the Palace and on Argent Street. You can also catch the Mundi Mundi Bash, a music festival in the desert just outside of Silverton, every winter.
