Arrrgghh! My back does hurt! For no reason that we can determine, Trevor’s back decided to seize up👎👎. This has happened once before but it still hurts like blazes. Physios were found, hot packs applied, anti-inflamms ingested, sleep shattered (Lesley’s) but recovery was underway. Trevor was soon able to walk, albeit stooped over like an even older man. Poop!

Fortunately, we had moved into central Broken Hill because we’d found a man to fix the LandCruiser. It had been carrying some cosmetic damage at the rear since we left Sydney with no real prospect of getting it fixed. But Randall, the boss at K&J Crash Repairs, had gone to extraordinary lengths to source parts and promised to fix the car in 3 days – a promise he kept 👍👍. Dealing with insurance has been another matter – GIO 👎👎eventually offered me an assessment in Sydney in a month’s time. Another one of those businesses which says “you can do it all online” (you can’t) and “we’re here to help you” (they aren’t). To be continued…

Additionally, the friendly and competent ARB people (👍threatening to👍👍) had a look at our electrics and made improvements, if not a full fix (time alone will tell). We hoped they would look at the solar on the van as well (another work in progress). At least we now KNOW that the solar ain’t working! Broken Hill may yet turn into Fixed-it Hill.

Before the mobility debacle, we were clever enough to see the key sights out of town. Silverton is just 39 dips (spoon drains) away from BH and what’s left is frozen in time. A bustling silver town (surprise!), it was swiftly ghosted by the discovery of better spoils at Broken Hill in 1883. A couple of great little museums, a good pub, some art(?) galleries, a MadMax exhibition – what more could you want? Apparently, they’re going to wring the neck of the MadMax franchise one more time, so there was some excitement about “filming starting soon”. Plenty of dusty desert to film on even though, right now, it’s as green as it ever gets.

Outside Silverton, we’d missed the Mundi Mundi Bash (Paul Kelly, Kate Ceberano, Ian Moss, many others) held way out on the plains two weeks ago, but we were able to see approximately where it was.

Closer to town was the Living Desert Sculptures display. Perfectly positioned on a relatively high point (+70m), the outlook over the surrounding plains and towards Broken Hill is spectacular. The sculptures themselves are a sort-of heroic failure. An early 1990s project to get a dozen international artists to participate in a sculpture camp in the bush for a month garnered great community support, resulting in similarly great blocks of sandstone mounted on the hilltop…and battle commenced. Unfortunately, the stone chosen was much harder than anticipated so most of the sculptures are more like chipped decoration than shaped stone. Despite this, the setting and the intent carried the day for us. A delightful walking trail was also great fun and there’s a campground as well. 👍👍, especially at sunset.

Right in the heart of town, a massive mullock heap rises up over the original “broken hill”. It looks as if it should eventually collapse onto the city, but apparently not. There’s a striking miners’ memorial (oh yes, he’s still got it!) reminding us that they died pretty regularly, and pretty young, back in the day. The memorial is in slight but sad disrepair, but still got across the message that “the most important thing to come out of a mine is a miner”. Also in sad and closed disrepair is a brilliantly sited cafe adjacent to the memorial, awaiting a new lessee. Much better, is the nearby Big Bench which can be scaled with a little G&D, so you know who made it up there.

Lesley, the physio and a co-operative caravan park, conspired to keep semi-crippled Trevor anchored in town for many more days. All sorts of talk about good sense and discretion. No recognition that we still had a long way to go, more rain was predicted and besides, what could possibly go wrong?