Flying over the vast plains of the Australian outback, there is little to see but occasional kangaroos or emus. Then as your airplane descends, you will observe a large town surrounded by greenery in the middle of the desert: this is the town of Broken Hill. Located in the far west of the Australian state of New South Wales, Broken Hill is a large mining town which since the 1880s has been producing copious quantities of silver, lead and zinc.
Discovery of Silver
For thousands of years the Broken Hill area had been home to the Willyama and Barkinji Aborigines. The British explorer,
Busch Gardens Charles Sturt, passed through the area in 1844, looking for a rumored inland sea. Pastoralists arrived in the 1850s and 1860s.
In 1883 a German-born boundary rider, Charles Rasp, took geological samples which were found to contain silver chloride. Rasp and a group of six others bought up much of the land of the Broken Hill area. In January 1885 they hit the jackpot and found the one of the world's largest lodes of silver, lead and zinc. The ore body was an amazing 5 miles long. Rasp and his partners became fabulously wealthy. They founded the Broken Hill Proprietary Company (BHP) which was to become Australia's largest company.
To transport the ore to the sea for shipment overseas, a railway line had to be built to the nearest sea port in Port Pirie, South Australia. A railway line was constructed by the South Australian government to the New South Wales border. When the New South Wales government refused to build a railway line from Broken Hill to join up with the South Australian line, the mining company built its own private line to the South Australian border. The working conditions of the miners were appalling for many years. Hundreds died in mining accidents and of diseases such as dysentry, typhoid and lung diseases. For this reason there was much worker unrest and many strikes, and a strong union movement developed in Broken Hill.
The visitor today can take a tour of one of the old mines, Delprat's Mine. The tours last two hours and visitors don a miner's helmet and light before descending the mineshaft in one of the miner's cages. The streets themselves are further reminders of Broken Hill's long mining history, with mining-related names such as Argent Street, Iodine Street,
Hotel In Wesley Chapel, Bromide Street, Oxide Street and Cobalt Street.
Historic Buildings
Broken Hill has a rich heritage of magnificent buildings, many of which were built with the profits from the mining industry. Along Chloride Street several of these buildings form an interesting streetscape: the red-brick Post Office (1890), the elaborate Town Hall (1890), the Police Station (1890), the Federation style Technical College (1900) and the Court House (1889).
A number of hotels that used to serve the thirsty miners in past years are worthy of a visit -- for example, the huge Palace Hotel (1889) with its long, cool verandahs and its cast-iron balustrades.
In Sulphide Street you can see the Trades Hall, the Mt. St Joseph's Convent of Mercy, the Sacred Heart Roman Catholic Cathedral and the Gothic revival Wesley Church.
Broken Hill also has Australia's first mosque, the Afghani Mosque (1891), built for the Afghan and Indian camel drivers, who were brought to the area to help with the camels providing transport in desert places where horses could not go.
