From Broken Hill, we headed about 25 kilometres out to Silverton for two nights.
It might be a tiny town these days, but there’s a surprising amount packed into it. Old mining history, historic buildings, an iconic pub, the Mad Max connection and some pretty incredible country surrounding it.
We’d planned on doing a bit of exploring.
We ended up filling the whole day.
Our First Night in Silverton
After getting settled in, our first night was an easy one.
We headed down to the Silverton Hotel for dinner and a beer.
It’s probably the building most people picture when they think of Silverton, and it’s exactly the sort of outback pub we’d hoped we’d find as we travelled further inland.
Old photos and memorabilia cover the place, there’s history everywhere you look and the pub has become almost as much of an attraction as the town itself.
After a day on the road, sitting down for a pub meal and a cold beer wasn’t a bad way to start our stay.
Heading Underground at Daydream Mine
The next day we headed out to Daydream Mine, between Silverton and Broken Hill.
This gave the kids — and us — a much better idea of what mining here actually involved.
Rather than only looking at old equipment above ground, we got to head underground and see the conditions miners worked in.
The tunnels aren’t some enormous modern mining operation. They’re tight, dark and a reminder of just how different mining was when places like Silverton were booming.
It’s one thing to tell the kids people worked underground in mines more than a century ago.
It’s another thing to actually take them down there.
That’s exactly the sort of experience we wanted them to get from travelling Australia.
Lunch at the Silverton Bakery
Once we’d finished underground, our next stop was considerably easier.
Silverton Bakery.
After exploring the mine, grabbing something to eat back in town went down pretty well.
One thing we’ve quickly learned travelling with kids is that you can pack as much history and sightseeing into a day as you like, but eventually someone’s going to ask what’s for lunch.
Usually about five minutes after you’ve left somewhere that sold food.
This time we were prepared.
Mad Max Country
You can’t really visit Silverton without coming across Mad Max 2.
The landscape surrounding the town was used extensively during filming, and the movie has become a huge part of Silverton’s identity.
So naturally, we headed into the Mad Max 2 Museum.
It’s packed with memorabilia, photographs, props, replica vehicles and information about the movie and its filming around the area.
Even if you’re not a die-hard Mad Max fan, it’s pretty interesting seeing how much of the movie was created around a little outback town in NSW.
Then you walk back outside, look at the surrounding landscape and suddenly it all makes sense.
The place already looks like a movie set.
Silverton Gaol
Our history lesson for the day continued at the Silverton Gaol Museum.
The old gaol now holds a huge collection of items relating to Silverton and the surrounding district.
Mining, everyday life, local families, old equipment and plenty of other pieces of the town’s past are packed inside.
Silverton today is tiny, so it’s strange imagining the place during its mining boom when thousands of people lived around here.
The old buildings scattered throughout town are a reminder that this quiet little place used to be something completely different.
Out to Mundi Mundi
While we were in the area, we also headed out to Mundi Mundi Lookout.
This was one of those places where the view does most of the talking.
The Mundi Mundi Plain just stretches out in front of you.
And keeps going.
And going.
After spending so much of our lives around towns, suburbs, mountains and trees in Victoria, seeing that much open country was something completely different.
It was also another sign that we were properly heading into the outback now.
There was a lot more of that open country waiting for us.
Two Nights Was Worth It
You could easily drive out from Broken Hill, have a quick look around Silverton and head back again.
We’re glad we didn’t.
Staying for two nights meant we weren’t racing from attraction to attraction trying to squeeze everything into a few hours.
We could have dinner at the pub, spend the next day exploring and actually get a feel for the place.
That’s one of the advantages we’ve started appreciating about travelling without a strict timetable.
Sometimes it’s worth slowing down.
From Silverton to South Australia
Silverton was one of those stops that had a bit of everything we enjoy.
4WD country.
Mining history.
An old outback pub.
Something interesting for the kids.
And a movie museum sitting in the middle of nowhere because one of Australia’s most famous films happened to be shot there.
From here we’d continue west, eventually crossing into South Australia.
There were railway towns, the Flinders Ranges and a lot of red dirt ahead of us.
And we were only just getting started.
— All 4 Good Wins
