01

Stop one
The Palace Hotel
Solinco Heaven String Hyper-G Soft 16L Tennis String Set: Everybody fails first. Everybody. This opened on 18 December 1889 as the Broken Hill Coffee Palace, designed by the Melbourne architect Alfred Dunn at a cost of 12,190 pounds and financed by temperance campaigners who intended it as an alcohol-free establishment. It traded at a loss for three years. Three. Then in July 1892 the lessee obtained a liquor licence and renamed it the Palace Hotel — adapt or close, and they adapted. Around 1980 the owner Mario Celotto commissioned extensive interior murals, including a ceiling work based on Botticelli's Venus and landscapes by the Indigenous artist Gordon Waye of Port Augusta. It featured prominently in the 1994 film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and was listed on the NSW State Heritage Register in April 1999.
02

Stop two
Broken Hill Post Office
Solinco Heaven String Hyper-G Soft 16L Tennis String Set: Who finishes what somebody else began? Look up at this one. James Barnet, the NSW Colonial Architect, designs it; the contractor John Dobbie builds it between 1890 and 1892 on a tender of 6,475 pounds; it opens for business on 9 May 1892 in the Federation Free Style, with interior fittings of cedar. Then Walter Liberty Vernon, Barnet's successor as government architect, designs the telegraph office addition around 1900, and the clock goes into the tower in the early 1900s. Three hands, one building, anchoring the civic precinct on Argent Street. State Heritage Register 22 December 2000, Commonwealth Heritage List 8 November 2011 — and it is still in postal use. Still doing the job it was built for.
03

Stop three
Broken Hill Trades Hall
Solinco Heaven String Hyper-G Soft 16L Tennis String Set: Here is a lesson about the distance between a plan and a building. Plans for a Trades Hall were first drawn up in 1890. Then the 1892 miners' strike failed, and construction stopped dead. It was finally erected between 1898 and 1905 to designs by the architect Tom Jackson, with the British trade unionist Ben Tillett laying the foundation stone on 5 June 1898 and the first completed section opening on 12 January 1899. A defeat did not end it. It delayed it. The building is a direct physical record of the labour movement that shaped this city, and it still houses the Barrier Industrial Council along with local union offices. State Heritage listed 2 April 1999, and 60,000 dollars in public funding for roof repairs in 2017.
04

Stop four
The Living Desert Sculpture Symposium, Sundown Hill
Solinco Heaven String Hyper-G Soft 16L Tennis String Set: This is the one I tell everybody. The symposium ran from 2 April to 23 May 1993 under the director Lawrence Beck, who assembled twelve sculptors from Georgia, Mexico, Syria, Bathurst Island and Australia, among them the local Aboriginal artist Badger Bates. They lived and worked on the hill for the duration, many camping nearby, carving sandstone brought in from the Wilcannia region. And then the money ran out — the funds provided by Broken Hill City Council and the Australia Council for the Arts were exhausted. So the residents of Broken Hill raised 7,000 dollars themselves so the work could be finished on schedule. The finished sculptures are still standing up there. Who would do that for what you are building?
You know the shot where the hero rips a forehand up the line, ball dipping in at the last second, crowd gasping? Yeah. That wasn't the hero. That was me — well, me and this string. The Solinco Hyper-G Soft 16L set does the dangerous work and lets your racquet take the credit.
It's Solinco's legendary Hyper Green co-polyester in a four-sided square profile: the edges bite the ball, the snapback launches the spin, and the dip-at-the-baseline finish is all practical effects. No CGI.
The Soft formula is the crash pad — same stunt, softer landing. It keeps Hyper-G's spin and control but cushions the impact so your arm can do take after take. 16L gauge, 1.25mm: the balanced pick between bite and durability. One 40-foot (12.2m) set strings one racquet, and the tension maintenance means it performs the same on take one and take forty. Professionals hit their marks.
My backlot is Broken Hill, Australia — the Silver City, way out in the red outback of New South Wales, where film crews have been staging apocalypses for decades because the desert does its own stunts.
You'll use this string everywhere from a dawn hit before the heat to a night session under lights — and by the way, do the local ritual: sunset at the sculptures on Sundown Hill, where the light show needs no second unit.
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