About

ABOUT
ilovebrokenhill.com , was first published on 8 December 2011 by Jane Deany. My blog is all about the famous outback Australian National Heritage Listed City named Broken Hill, located in the state of New South Wales. I first visited #BrokenHill in 2002 and have returned many times since then. ilovebrokenhill.com will help you discover what's great about this historic mining city, where in the mid 1880's the line of lode, a rich ore body of silver, lead and zinc was found. You will find stories about anything related to Broken Hill.

Saturday 28 September 2013

Helbar Farm Photography Gallery Silverton hosts weekend exhibition

Art Scene
It was wonderful to come across Helbar Farm Photography Gallery at Silverton the other day. Silverton by the way is about 25 kms north west from Broken Hill. It was perfect timing as it gave me the chance to meet gallery co-owner and photographer Helen Murray who not only showed me around some of the farm and her gallery, but she told me about an upcoming exhibition this weekend.


Photographer Helen Murray at the entrance to
Helbar Farm Photography Gallery, Silverton
The gallery and surrounding lush gardens which form a mini oasis on the edge of Silverton will host a special photography exhibition which will feature the impressive work of  Helen, together with the fabulous work of well known local Broken Hill photographer Boris Hlavica (who taught Helen photography).

Up and coming photographer Ali-G's work will also be on display.

It's a beautiful setting and I'm sure it will be a great exhibition based on what I saw of Helen's wonderful work, and what I've seen of Boris's work when I visited his gallery 'Images of Australia' in the past, I wish I could be there, but it was time to get back to Melbourne.
Helen Murray at the entrance of the
Helbar Farm Photography Gallery



Location
Helbar Farm Photography Gallery is located near Penrose Park Silverton. Just head to Silverton, look for the signs to both Penrose Park and the clearly signed gallery which is actually in Umberumberka Creek Road (Lot 10), turn right off Silverton Road (if you're coming from the Broken Hill direction).

Telephone 08 8087 3962


Some of the oasis like garden at
Helbar Farm Photography Gallery


Why not take the chance to look around the other galleries, cafes, hotel and other attractions in Silverton and make a day of it.

Silverton is a small place but there's a lot to see.

Gallery opened today, Saturday 11am, and will also be open Sunday from 10am.

Enjoy, cheers, Jane D

Tuesday 24 September 2013

I love The Palace Hotel Broken Hill, you will too

The Palace Hotel Broken Hill
The Palace Hotel Broken Hill
A trip to Broken Hill is not complete without a visit to The Palace Hotel (The Palace) on Broken Hill's main drag in Argent Street. And speaking of drag, the drag queens from The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert fame, spent time at The Palace. In fact some of this legendary movie was filmed there, and the drag queens helped to make the hotel the internationally famous place it has become. But this beautiful hotel's history dates back well before the days of 'Priscilla' in 1994. The Palace Hotel was built in 1889 and was designed by a Melbourne architect. It actually started life as a coffee palace.


Me (left) with Traci-Lee Powles (centre) and Esther La Rovere
But it's not only drag queens that still pop in on a regular basis, it's a place where you'll find miners and other colourful friendly locals, mixing it up with business travellers and the many tourists that pass through Broken Hill every day. All enjoy the same friendly and helpful service that I've come to enjoy each time I visit The Palace, as host Esther La Rovere and the whole Palace team ensure a warm welcome to all who visit a place they're obviously very proud of.


Sunset at The Palace Hotel
The hotel offers a wide range of accommodation from deluxe renovated en suite rooms to pub style rooms with the bathrooms down the hall. There's even dorm accommodation for the budget traveller. You'll also find heritage architecture, lots of history, art, award winning food, a bar, the lovely wide verandah and balcony, regular live entertainment, weekly Two Up and a fabulous unique atmosphere which I'm sure you won't find anywhere else in the world. There are impressive murals and painted ceilings everywhere, quirky curios in the reception area, a soon to be re-opened second bar (it's being renovated). There are also plans for a cafe on the corner. I can't wait for that to open as it's a spot bursting with cafe potential.


Two Up action, ps that's Jeff Kennet in the
background cheering as Hawthorn just beat Geelong
to get into the AFL Grand Final in Victoria, Yeah!
I normally don't discuss where I stay when I visit Broken Hill, as my blog is not about promoting anything other than all the good things about Broken Hill itself. I've not specifically advertised a business, other than the occasional mention as part of an article.

On this occasion I decided to invite The Palace to do a collaborative promotion with me because I wanted to really sing the praises of this majestic hotel as being more than just a place to stay, drink or eat, it really is an almost essential part of any itinerary when planning a visit to Broken Hill. In fact I think it's an experience not to be missed.


Esther La Rovere (left) and Traci-Lee Powles
I've stayed at The Palace several times before, but on this trip, for a couple of days I was a guest of management which gave me a chance to really explore and soak up what a stay at The Palace is really like from the point of view of someone writing a feature article, on one busy weekend at the start of the peak tourist season. I can tell you, everyone was having a lot of fun.


Whether you stay a few nights, come for dinner, have a few drinks, play Two Up, listen to a local or visiting band, catch up with friends or family, shoot some pool or maybe just take a few photos, you really must check out The Palace Hotel Broken Hill, you'll love it.

ps The Palace Hotel was recently presented with a "Certificate of Excellence" 2013 award by high profile on-line travel rating service TripAdvisor (the world's largest travel site according to comScore Media Metrix for TripAdvisor Sites, worldwide, March 2013).

Recipients receive the award in recognition for being in the top 10% of businesses as rated on the TripAdvisor site.


Enjoy the hospitality, cheers, Jane D

Saturday 21 September 2013

Full Moon in Broken Hill

A full moon rising above the horizon in the country (or anywhere really) is always a treat I think. It's a wonderful moment to enjoy nature at it's best, and it's also one of the simple pleasures of life to witness a fabulous full moon appearing on the horizon as it begins making it's grand monthly entrance into the sky.

I was therefore pleased to be visiting Broken Hill at the time of the full moon and took advantage of some great photo opportunities featuring the full moon. The photo below features one of my favourite Broken Hill vistas from on top of the Line of Lode, with the Broken Earth Complex on the left, the striking Miner's Memorial in the centre and the full moon quite high in the sky on the right.




Enjoy, cheers, Jane D

Wednesday 18 September 2013

Farrer's Sussan Ley newly appointed Assistant Minister for Education

The Hon. Sussan Ley MP
Politics
Congratulations are once again in order to The Hon. Sussan Ley MP who was honoured with being included in Prime Minister Elect Tony Abbott's newly elected LNP Coalition Government's cabinet, which Mr Abbott announced on Monday.

Ms Ley has been elevated to one of the eleven members of the outer ministry, in the role of Assistant Minister for Education.

South Australian Federal Member for Sturt, The Hon. Christopher Pine MP is the newly appointed Minister for Education.  Mr Pine is also the new Leader of the House.

I congratulate Ms Ley on her new responsibilities and wish her well in her new role. Naturally, congratulations and best wishes are also in order to Mr Pine and all the newly appointed MPs.

Ms Ley is the Member for Farrer (the Federal electorate which includes Broken Hill).

For more information about Ms Ley, please see her website www.sussanley.com . I wrote a post about her re-election on 8 September 2013, please see link to that post here.

For further information about Tony Abbot's first ministry, see link here sourced via a link from ABC Australia's website www.abc.net.au, which re-directs to www.scribd.com website page.

Best wishes to all new MPs, cheers, Jane Deany

Monday 16 September 2013

Broken Hill History Week 16-20 September 2013 at City Library

Charles Rasp Memorial Library
Broken Hill City Libary
Community Event
Don't miss the fascinating display at the Broken Hill City Library to mark History Week.

The event will run from 16 - 20 September 2013. Mon-Fri 9am-6pm.

The library will be showing films all day downstairs. Feel free to bring your lunch or snacks and sit down and learn about the history of the region.

Charles Rasp Memorial Library (City Library)
249 Blende Street, Broken Hill

September 2013 marks the 130th anniversary of Charles Rasp discovering the famous Broken Hill ore-body back in 1883. 

Enjoy, cheers, Jane D

Sunday 15 September 2013

'No Exit' playing tonight at the Alma Hotel Broken Hill South

Entertainment
Popular local Broken Hill band 'No Exit' is playing at the Alma Hotel tonight from 8pm to midnight.

If you're wondering what to do tonight, I can recommend No Exit as I've seen them play before and they're fantastic.

I've met John Gavranich the lead guitarist and vocalist and Terry Tresize the drummer a few times over the years and you can see they love performing. John in particular has told me he finds it relaxing and a change from his other daily business activities. John's brother Velco plays base guitar and is also a vocalist, the other band member is Hands who plays harmonica.

The style is 'Rock n Roll' and they are a covers band and sometimes they do backing work as well.

John seems to like performing so much he's in another 'Country Western' style band, Blu Ridge which got together more recently.

I saw them play at Club Legion recently. Most entertaining, lots of people up dancing which is a good sign.

Back to No Exit, they've been playing around the pubs and clubs of Broken Hill for years. I saw them at the Muso Club (Broken Hill Musician's Club).

Here's a link to a Youtube clip of a Johnny Cash Medley No Exit did at the Demo Club (Barrier Social Democratic Club) back in 2011.



Alma Hotel, 212 Hebbard Street, Broken Hill South

For other ideas of what's on around Broken Hill you could check out the -

What's on Broken Hill page on Facebook, see link here.

Enjoy, cheers, Jane D

Saturday 14 September 2013

Outburst's Tracy Peduto sings karaoke at Southern Cross tonight

Entertainment
If you're not booked up tonight, why not go down to the Southern Cross Hotel tonight where you can join in some karaoke fun with Tracy Peduto of Outburst Entertainment who'll be belting out some great songs.

Tracy Peduto at the
Southern Cross Hotel
I've heard Tracy sing (and sung along with her too). She has what seems to be an endless playlist with an incredible variety. Her repertoire's amazingly diverse


You can see she truly loves to sing, and in fact I know she loves to sing because she told me so when we chatted yesterday about tonight's gig.


(Although recently reported that Tracy only sings at the Southern Cross Hotel, this isn't the case). For the record, I've seen Tracy perform at The Palace Hotel, and she also plays at Club Legion.


Just keep an eye out for the weekly entertainment guide in the Barrier Daily Truth. The coming weekend's entertainment's is usually listed in Thursday's paper each week, although this week it was in Friday's paper.
Southern Cross Hotel Broken Hill
courtesy www.gdaypubs.com.au
photo by Jon Graham

Entertainment starts from 7.30pm and will probably go till quite late. It's a little after that now, so I'm sure things will be just getting into full swing.


Southern Cross Hotel
357 Cobalt Street (corner Oxide Street), Broken Hill

Maybe come along after the fireworks (9pm) which will be held at the Broken Hill Show (Memorial Oval, William Street/Barrier Highway). The show finishes up for the year at 11pm.


Enjoy, cheers, Jane Deany

Thursday 12 September 2013

R U OK?Day 2013 is on again across Australia

Community Event

In the words of the The R U OK? Foundation's website -

'R U OK? is a not for profit organisation dedicated to encouraging all people to regularly and meaningfully ask 'are you ok?' to support those struggling with life.'

Today 12 September is R U OK?Day for 2013.


Map from R U OK? website showing where
R U OK?Day events are being held around the country.
Please click on this link below to find out more

www.ruokday.com



I know it's showtime in Broken Hill, and that's all about having a great time, however, I think it's pretty important not to forget people struggling with the horrors of depression, especially in an on-going way, even at this otherwise fun time of year.

R U OK?Day is Australia's national day of action which is an annual event on the second Thursday in September. The day is dedicated to reminding people to regularly check in with family, friends and colleagues to see if they are okay.

R U OK? also has resources to help you ask throughout the year R U OK? They're worth checking out.

I wish I knew to ask one of my precious brother's if he was okay, as he was not. That was seven years ago in 2006. That's when he decided that life was all too much. We never even knew he was depressed. Perhaps the key point to this story is the fact that we had no idea how bad he must have been feeling, and that's one of the key messages of the R U OK? Foundation and R U OK?Day. You often won't know unless you ask.

Enjoy the fun of the Broken Hill show which coincidentally started on the same day as
R U OK?Day, (see my article about the show via the link here) but don't forget to ask the all important question from time to time -

R U OK?

Also, don't forget, you can call Lifeline anytime on 13 11 14 if you feel you need support with depression and related issues.

Broken Hill's Lifeline office is at 194 Argent Street, Broken Hill, (08) 8087 7525.

Jane D

Wednesday 11 September 2013

Broken Hill's Annual Show 2013 runs from 12-14 September

image courtesy www.visitnsw.com
Entertainment/Community Event
It's on again - Broken Hill's annual show, now in it's 124th year, and it's an event I hear most local children don't want to miss! 

I'm pretty sure lots of adults are more than happy to have this annual opportunity to share some fun with their families at this country classic event.

There will be plenty to see and lots to do including a great variety of exciting rides, plenty of food, equestrian events, dog jumping, the popular animal nursery, arts and crafts, fireworks and of course the all important show-bags. Quite simply there'll be events and lots of fun for the whole family, the young and the young at heart, in fact there's probably something for everyone.

There'll be King Neptunes Raceway, The Big Red Bucket and other side show alley favourites. There'll be plenty of rides for the 'little kids' including 'The Tea Cups', 'The Lady Bug' and 'Piggy Train', (and others) and for the 'bigger kids', rides such as 'The Hurricane', 'The Kamikaze', 'Tilt-a-Whirl' and 'The Cha-Cha', to name a just a few.

More details are published in Thursday 12 September's issue of the Barrier Daily Truth.

Horse events will be on from 8am on Saturday (and Sunday according to the paper).

Dog jumping is on Saturday from 11am.

Vintage cars from 8pm Saturday night.

There's also a new pavilion this year, the 'Days Gone By Museum' which sounds fascinating and well worth a look.

This year the theme is "Our Mining History".

Fireworks are on around 9pm on both Friday and Saturday nights, and are meant to be a real highlight.

Dates:   Thursday 12th September to Saturday 14th September 2013

Gates open 5pm Thursday 12th September

Venue: Broken Hill Memorial Oval (Williams Street / Barrier Highway)

Contact information - Shareen Johnstone
Phone - (08) 8087 4160
Email - willeila@clearmail.com.au

Oh, and while I'm on the subject of 'shows', the Royal Melbourne Show is also about to begin, and that's on in my hometown. It runs from Saturday 21st September to Wednesday 2nd October. It's a great show, so if you're down south in the so-called 'big-smoke', I can definitely recommend it!

Enjoy, cheers, Jane D

Sunday 8 September 2013

Congratulations Sussan Ley re-elected for Farrer - 7 September 2013

Sussan Ley, Federal member for Farrer
Politics - Federal Election 2013
Congratulations The Hon. Sussan Ley MP, representing the Liberal Party of Australia, on winning the seat of Farrer again, and this time gaining a seat in the newly elected (on 7 September 2013) Coalition Government of Australia. It was a decisive victory for Ms Ley. It indicates a strong vote of confidence in the work Ms Ley has already been doing for the electorate since she was first elected to parliament in the seat of Farrer in 2001.

At that time Broken Hill was not part of the division of Farrer it was instead in the division of Parkes. However the electoral boundaries changed due to a redistribution prior to the 2007 Federal election, which saw Farrer grow in land area to just under 200,000 square kilometres, and the boundary change to take in Broken Hill.

Once again in late 2009, due to another redistribution that saw the loss of one NSW division altogether, Farrer increased in size by over 47,000 square kilometres, to cover a total area of 247,097 square kilometres. The redistribution saw the transfer of just an additional 727 electors to the division.

(Redistributions are designed to ensure that each electorate has a representative and roughly equal number of voters in each division, and are influenced by population growth and flows to different areas over time).

From our brief meeting in Canberra earlier this year and from what I have read, I believe Sussan will continue to be an effective member in this huge electorate which stretches as far away as Albury on the Murray River. Fortunately Sussan has a commercial pilot's licence and uses a plane regularly to fly around this vast electorate, which is almost the size of New Zealand.

At the time of writing this post, 100 out of 105 polling booths in Farrer had finished counting and 82.6% of the vote had been counted. Ms Ley had won 66.3% of the vote on two party preferred voting and was enjoying a 1.7% swing towards her on that basis, with her nearest rival Gavin Hickey representing the Country Labor Party, suffering a corresponding 1.7% swing away from him.

Seven other political parties contested the seat. The parties and their respective candidates running in this division, in order of appearance on the ballot paper were -

Rise Up Australia (Narelle Davis)
Democratic Labour (Brendan Cattell)
Katter's Australia (Ken Trewin)
Australian Liberal (Sussan Ley) - retained
Palmer United (Ron Emmerton)
Country Labor (Gavin Hickey)
Bullet Train for Australia (Tracey Powell)
Christian Democrats (Frank Horwill)
Australian Greens (Christina Sobey)

I'm confident Sussan will make every effort to represent the people of Broken Hill, and everyone in the electorate of Farrer, effectively, energetically and diligently.

Broken Hill's mining heritage has meant there have been strong links to Labor in the past, so Sussan made local history when she won one of the eight Broken Hill booths - Morgan Street Street School - from Gavin Hickey 351 to 328 votes.

I wish Sussan well in her new responsibilities. ABC Broken Hill reported earlier today that she has indicated a couple of issues she's going to get right onto, and they are to address issues relating to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan and black spots with mobile phone reception. See link here to read more from that ABC article.

Note if another candidate from another party was elected, I would wish them well also, as this is a non-political blog. Okay, yes, this is a political themed article, but I'm just trying to report the facts, write about something very topical, and I enjoy the cut and thrust of politics, and this is my blog ;-) 

Cheers, Jane D