Whoever coined the phrase 'the middle of nowhere' must have had Broken Hill in mind, because that's where it was -- and still is, although the Road to Nowhere is now all-weather tarmac. Seven hundred miles due west of Sydney. Three hundred and thirty miles northeast of Adelaide. It sprawls about the low range of lode-bearing hills, and, when I was a child, was dominated by the artificial mountains of skimp, grey silt-like stuff that was left over...