Broken Hill

Lots of interesting minerals at White's Museum.

Pro Hart operating the electric train thing, doing serious mine things underground. Getting paid, but absolutely not enjoying being under the ground all day.

So he went pro, as a painter after some time, and painted like mad all the time. 

Eventually he became famous, even starring in an add for stain resistant carpet. This painting is acrylic on carpet.

Next day - Pro Hart museum. We saw some funny videos of Pro Hart making a huge mess on a carpet, wading in spaghetti to make a beautiful dragonfly. Then the cleaning lady cleans it; the carpet is supposed to be stain resistant. His paintings are great; drunk people at the races, drunk people on the home brew, mining images.

Floggers Hill - how they did justice in the good old days.

Lunch is a freezing windy day in the park to bbq the meat we'd had planned for it for a couple of days. Boys go nuts on the flying fox in the park.

After you play, you must wash any lead off your hands. That will reduce lead exposure and damage to young brains.

White's mine museum is pretty interesting.

Afternoon is at White's Mine; a museum of mining equipment and art made from minerals glued to the canvas. His wife tells us all the gruesome ways miners would die. You'd start work at 14 and be dead by 30. 'Thank God for the Unions.' I guess everyone would still generally die and be working 50 hour weeks, whatever is cheapest.

Mr White is a "mineral" artist. He makes indestructible art. He will scrape it with his nails if you catch him there. I saw him do it when I was here last in 1995.

Laundry stop in Patton St for a 10 days load.

Louis worships the machine of the wash, while Ollie gets in some last minute school work.

A shop for fruit/veg/supplies, then it's the Royal Flying Doctor Service. They cover all of Australia, which is mostly sparsly populated. If the locals can drive at 100km/h on the local airstrip, then the doctor can land. They rely about 50% on donations. Thanks to the TV show, there is a Friends of the Flying Doctor UK group. They had a plane named for them, and a rep flown out to see it. They don't get a dollar from the actual show. Marie made sure we gave them a half decent donation. It's the difference between life and death for anyone in about 70% of the country.

The entry to the Pro Hart art gallery - well worth a visit. There's so much to see in Broken Hill.