Friday 8 May 2015

the weirdness of broken hill



As part of the journey, we got to stop at Broken Hill, once a boom town for mining, and now - still a mining town but more normal. Well, I say normal, but the whole sojourn felt quite surreal; and not just because we were woken up before dawn (after not sleeping the previous night due to it being a train and all) and were a little lagging. First, we were driven around almost every street in a bus, up and down the small town grid, being shown absolutely everything - some of it twice. I kid you not, we were even introduced to the Coles supermarket as an exciting event; all given out in full chatty and obvious jokes compere mode. Which was followed by a murmured repeat across the whole bus, due to a larger than usual number of older, hard-of-hearing people who needed to be told all over again by their nearest and dearest.

Then, at some unclear point, we were driven to the waste earth/slag heap piled up by the town, on top of which has been built a miner's memorial, in honour of those who had died. A mixture of poignant and community hall, with volunteers serving scones and tea. But also, since I had been reading a book called Terra Nullius on the train, also echoed strangely of missing - indigenous -voices. Neither the tour nor the memorial plaques contained any reference to aboriginal history or people, a whole world ignored and marginalised. 

At the same time, there was another absence - the fact that all the time we were at the memorial, we were walking on top of a working mine, and the tough hard work that continues to involve.





1 comment:

  1. I remember that the tour guide pointed out the dug-out canoe built as part of an indigenous people's training course - but the distinct lack of water may have made the project somewhat superfluous.

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