Last night we drove to The Living Desert, a park about 12km out of Broken Hill. It has a nature trail and a walk to the top of a hill where you can see a series of sandstone sculptures carved by artists from around the world in 1993, each with their own story. We planned to go at the end of the day to see the sun set hoping there would be a nice view from it.
We arrived there about 5 (the gates shut at 7) and decided not to drive directly to the top, but to drive around and park at the bottom of the hill, and walk up to the sculptures. That was a big mistake.
The walk winds around the stony hill and through a multitude of indigenous plants giving great views at every turn.
By the time we reached the sculpture garden at the top we had seen beautiful rocky outcrops, amazing views and quietly watched emus walk through the bushes while a group of teenagers stomped past, completely oblivious to them on their quest to get to the art.
No sculpture could outdo the natural beauty we saw on the way up there so when we arrived to find a crowd oohing and aaahing over what I thought were mostly average pieces we were distinctly underwhelmed. Some were good, but they were the ones with the largest amount of admirers and the hardest to see.
My apologies to those artists who had obviously put a lot of effort into their sculptures, including one who injured his hand badly while there, and whose piece had to be finished by a group effort, but I know what I like…
We did a turn around the sculptures, dodging the other visitors all the while. After re-grouping we decided that we would be more entertained by walking to one of the spots we had seen earlier, making ourselves comfortable, and watching the sunset in peace.
We wandered down the hill and found a nice spot to watch the shadows lengthening in the distance. Of course, once the sun had sunk to acceptably low level we realized we had no idea what time it was and from our vantage point we could see that our car was the only one left in the carpark. Eeek! We zoomed back to the car and made it out before the gate shut… phew! It would have been a cold night out there, that’s for sure!
Buried words and Bushwa. 
Just looked up the sculptures… I see what you mean. I think that for it to have been more visually effective there should have been more contrast between the landscape and the sculptures and the pieces should’ve been done on a much larger scale.
The pieces are quite big, but as you said the contrast was just all wrong. If they were in a city park or street art they would probably be amazing, huge pieces of nature in an unexpected place. As it is they are in a place that really needs no adornment to be beautiful, well, if you open your eyes and not just barge right through like most of the crowd that is!
I just googled the sculptures as well and apart from one or two…..
I wonder if the artists were working on site with the natural stone? I’ve seen some truly beautiful things where the artist has enhanced the natural features of the rock to bring out something amazing and unexpected but these mostly seem either ‘imposed’ or way too subtle. And yeah I agree with you, the contrast is lacking. The place though… wow. 🙂
I asked the kids what they thought of it the next morning and number 1 son said “so were they really old, or did some modern artist do them?” I repiled “modern” and the thumb went down. They both agreed that if they were really old they would have been impressed but as far as recent art goes they were not bothered with them. Obviously brainy number 1 was not even stirred to read the explanatory plaques…
The artists did work on site with the stone, and yes, the imposed image ones were the least popular with me. One of them was a tribute to the late Fred Hollows with the cryptic explanation that only the artist and Fred himself would understand what it was about. No explanation as to what relationship, if any, the artist and Mr. Hollows had…
I think that if I was out there with a hammer and chisel I would have carved out some kind of couch facing the horizon, it probably would have been the most popular one there!
lmao – what’s that called? Interactive art or something?
I’m fascinated by the Fred Hollows inscription. My evil mind is immediately jumping to all sorts of conclusions. Kind of unfair as the man is no longer with us to refute them!
I can only think that the late Mr. Hollows might have rathered a donation to his worthy charity as a sign of respect instead of an unidentifiable sculpture!
LMAO – you are so right!
One of those vacation adventures when things don’t go as planned, but the sunset, the Emus and the mix of other tourists make for great travel stories.
That is why we never plan a holiday, we never even bother with an ultimate destination as that just puts pressure on us to stick to a schedule. At the moment we are still stuck in Broken Hill, we can’t decide on another destination so we are just pretending to be locals and hanging around!
We always think that if you just zoom through a town, barely stopping for a coffee, you can’t really say you have been there. Once you know where the milk is in the supermarket you can really say that you have stayed there!