'We're kind of like Vegas': This country town in NSW is turning heads

I've got to be careful what I write about Broken Hill, because my last piece got me into trouble. I implied that the townspeople ate too much junk food and never walked anywhere. The local media crucified me. But Broken Hill is a friendly, fascinating place, with a couple of great pubs, at least one very good restaurant, and a large and visible gay community. For a NSW city of 17,500 people, it's extraordinarily remote - 1143 kilometres west of Sydney and working on South Australian time. It's a Victorian-era silver, zinc and lead mining town that hit hard times and had to transform itself into something else. Rather surprisingly, it slapped on a bit of lippy and slipped into a frock to become the drag capital of the desert.

The city's landmark Palace Hotel was a setting for the cult road movie/musical, The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, in which two drag queens and a transgender woman cross the outback in a cabaret tour bus. The Palace was always a special pub, decorated with a surreal gallery of eclectic murals, and now attracts a fantastically diverse clientele of bushmen, Priscilla pilgrims, professionals, eccentrics, and men wearing Akubras who could be any or all of the above.

"We're kind of like Vegas," says Palace regular and local lawyer Steve Wright, "in the desert; two-up's legal all year round ... "

But he can't quite make the comparison work.

"Vegas, if it closed down at 9pm," he admits.

The Palace is not so much a gay pub as a Priscilla pub. Visitors can sleep in bedrooms above the bars, including two Priscilla Original Suites where the drag queens stayed in the movie. The hotel's reception doubles as a drag-queen gift shop.

Film-makers have always been drawn to Broken Hill by the light. Other movies made in the area include Wake in Fright, A Town Like Alice, Reckless Kelly, Razorback and a bafflingly large number of sequels such as Mission: Impossible II, Mad Max 2, Carmen II and Godzilla: Final Wars.

Broken Hill is the only place outside of the UK that has a memorial to the bandsmen who drowned on the RMS Titanic in 1912, whose heroism in continuing to play while the ship sank struck a chord with the colliery bandsmen of the city. The musicians are remembered with a broken column erected in 1913 in Sturt Park Reserve.

Notable local buildings include the ornate people's palace of the Trades Hall, and the Synagogue of the Outback Museum which, it is claimed, was once the most remote synagogue on Earth. The museum's Margaret Price, co-author of the unlikely book, Jews of the Outback, is an extraordinarily knowledgeable guide. The museum also has a shed dedicated to the Titanic.

Broken Hill thrives on festivals. The St Pats Day Races in March draw huge crowds, which is unusual for a city with only about half a dozen racehorses. The Perfect Light Film Festival follows a week or so later. During the Mundi Mundi Bash music festival in August, Broken Hill is nose-to-tail with caravans. The Broken Heel Festival ("3+ days of drag and divas in the desert") in September celebrates all that glitters but isn't mined.

The town has developed a reputation as an arts hub, as many younger artists have moved to the area for the light and the space, and the unbelievably cheap property (the average price for a three-bedroom house is $201,000).

The spirit of the 1970s circle of primitive painters, the Brushmen of the Bush, lives on in Broken Hill. The Pro Hart Gallery showcases the variable work of the local man who pioneered "cannon painting" and "balloon painting". Another former miner, Sam Byrne, enjoys a better reputation among art critics, and is well represented in the Broken Hill City Art Gallery.

The restaurant at the Palace serves superior pub food, but the Old Salt Bush is the town's fine-dining destination: try Salt Bush's entree share plate, including emu pies and smoked kangaroo. Confusingly, the Old Salt Bush is housed in a building signposted as the Silver City Chinese Restaurant. But if you're looking for the Silver City Chinese Restaurant, you'll find it in a former pub signposted as the Old Willyama Hotel (this is the kind of problem that arises when signage is heritage-listed).

In a city of pies, pasties and rolls, the Sufi Bakery does a nice line in sourdough breads and pastries. And the homemade "very hot chilli pie" from Mac's Oven Foods lives up to its enticing name.

There has not been a new pub opened in Broken Hill since the 19th century, but the BHP (Broken Hill Pub) is a much-admired renovation with a popular restaurant at the back and a front bar that opens out to the street.

Most visitors will take a side trip to the ghost town of Silverton, 25 kilometres to the west. Silverton has four art galleries, three churches, a jail museum, a former council chambers, the Silverton Hotel and some goats. On the wall of the pub is an honour board remembering 10 lost hotels and a brewery. Since 2010, the town has also been home to the Mad Max 2 Museum, which must surely be the only museum to a movie sequel anywhere in the world.

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Getting there: You can fly direct from Sydney to Broken Hill with either Qantas or Rex. Rex also flies direct from Adelaide and Dubbo. The NSW TrainLink Outback Xplorer leaves Central Station in Sydney at 6.18am once a week, on Monday. The train heads back from Broken Hill to Sydney on Tuesday at 7.15am. The journey takes about 13.5 hours and costs the unusual sum of $143.88 return in economy class.

Staying there: Excellent studio apartments at the Red Earth Motel start at $175 per night. The Red Earth is one of the best motels I have stayed at in Australia. Highly recommended. redearthmotel.com.au

Single rooms with shared bathroom at the Palace Hotel start at $65 per night. Double rooms with ensuite start at $155. thepalacehotelbrokenhill.com.au

Explore more: visitbrokenhill.com

The writer travelled at his own expense.