THE SILVER CITY

Hokitika Guardian, 22 October 1927, Page 4

THE SILVER CITY

(.Melbourne Age). Is Broken Jlill doomed to go the way of many other of the famous mining towns of Australia? The question is prompted by The announcement, of 1 he. closing of the "Big" and other mines along the line of lode a step which, unfortunately, is likely to. he followed by the closing of all the mines. Closure of the mines will stem the life blood of the Silver City. No other city in Australia depends so much for its existence on one industry. 'fare away I rum Broken Hill its mines, and tile heart of the city ceases to heat. Bendigo and Ballarat failed as mining cities; industries and manufactures

sprang up to take the place of the gold; an agricultural hinterland keptwealth in these centres. Gympie failed, and a great dairying community took the place of the miners. Kalgeorlio is List failing, but the wheat belt is fast approaching the Golden Mile. Should the mines at Broken Hill fail, all else fails with them, and it surely must go hack to what it was before Charles Rasp sank his shaft in the hone of linding tin- and opened up one ol the liohe-t silver mining liehls in the world.

On the edge of civilisation, nearest of Australia's important towns to tin. centre of the continent. Broken Hill was horn in silver mining, has lived by silver milling; inevitably it must die iby silver milling. Its situation is such it can have 110 other future. Must it then go hael; to something approaching the days when it. was simply a. paddock in a sheep station? A place shunned, a place of heat, of dust storm, of drought. f Alas, it seems this must inevitably he the fa to of the romantic silver city. Broken Jlill has been a place of romantic future, of great hopes raised and great hopes dashed ; a place ol success easily won. of failure just as easy. A hard, grasping, all-compel-ling place of heartless sand-swept, plain, of mirage, of heat, of despair. And yet a place of comfort, of wealth and, of health, of happiness and ol pleasure. Red rust city girt by low hills, north and south through it

running its rich line of lode. Indus-try-humming city of never-ceasing activity. Ugly city; beautiful city. Surely the price of lead falling, ever falling, will not compel cessation of all this wealth production; of this activity that keeps alive Australia’s most intriguing, most misunderstood city.

Intrepid Charles .Sturt, seeking the mythical inland sea that was only visionary sea of mirage, first saw the Ilorken-Hill in 1814. And penned this picture:—"At about three miles we passed a very remarkably and perfectly isolated, hill, at about 150 feet in height. It ran longitudinally from south to north for about 350 yards, and was hare of trees and shrubs, nith the exception of one or two easuarinas. The basis of this hill was a slaty ferruginous rock, and protruding above the ground along the spine of the hill was a line of the finest hepatic iron ore T ever saw. Tt lay in blocks of various sizes and of many tons weight, piled one upon the other, without a. particle of earth either on their faces or between them.” Sturt, carried with him spyera! pieces of this rock. On his return to Adelaide the .specimens were handed to the Governor of South Australia, They disappeared then

front the ken of men, and the Broken Hill with its great outcropping of ore, slumbered on, red and burning, holding in its arid bosom its secret of great wealth. The squatter followed Sturt, coining into the blue bush and the salt-bush country with his sheep. ’Wondering at the grim formation of the Broken Hill, and perhaps idly fingering the white quartz pebbles -that were strewn over the plains. Nothing beyond that. The light against drought and the desert was too severe to allow of any thought being given to any secret the burnished, gloomy hill might hold. But with the discovery of. gold in New South Wales and Victoria men remembered those white quartz pebbles—squatters, shepherds. drovers from Queensland who had passed by the Broken Mill. In 1897 a rush took place. Men faced the rigors of the desert, confident that at Broken Hill they wionld find gold: That rush is one of the most terrible recorded in the mining history of Australia. Only death lay at Broken Hill. Men died from thirst and from exposure. Few reached tihe rumored El Dorado. Ot one party of live that reached the place, only two returned. Gold ? There was no gold. At bite quartz pebbles, yes. But no gold. And no water. Nothing else. Only Hie liz-ard-hacked. iron hill, grimly burnished in the sun. Holding its secret still.

For a time men forgot the Broken Hill and its horrors. The squatters still came, and the drovers. Mount Gipps Station was established, the homestead built on the creek of that name, nine miles from the Broken Hill, which was within the boundaries of the station. In charge o' the station was George McC’dlo-li, nephew of Sir James Met ullocb. Premier of Victoria, and principal of Ike first of McCulloch, (Sellars and Go, which firm owned the station, A grim man, George Mi Guild !>. ligiding a grim fight to establish his station, lie was to play an imp.or lain part in the Broken 11 ill’s A vchqmient. For ten years Mourn Gipps was tho only life of the p-hire. And this life was a continual tight against great odds.

In 1870 Baddy Green, a storekreaer and teamster of Alenindie. on the Darling .River, opened up the lodes at. Thackaringa. The miners began limiting in. Fmhernmherkn lodes were discovered. Silver! on was, opened up. All about the Broken Hill rich tnin.es were found. At Stephens’s Greek, nine miles to the north: at, Bound Hill, three miles to the north-east; af the Pinnacles, eleven miles to the south-west; at Silvorton. less than twenty miles to the southwest. Silvorton boomed in 1889. A town sprang up- a substantial town. Life was good, desnite scarcity of water, east of food and freight. Freight cost £7 a ton. bread 2s a loaf, water Is a bucket. But there was rich, silver; groat slugs of it. Buvnamoota followed Silverion ; foamed in a dav: a town sprang up over liighi. In less than ten years I’ur--11 a moot a was a dea.d town, desoi ted and decayed. Silvorton, too. was to fail, hut not until the Broken Hid gave up its secret. That was in 1883. On a September morning in that year Charles Rasp, boundary rider at Mount Gipps Station, rode to the Broken Hill the hill the people at Silverton had named the hill of mullock, lie had studied that hill many a. time; dreamed that it contained wealth ot tin. Now he was to see for himself. AVhat he saw satisfied him. He pegged out the blackest patch on the hill. Rode then to the camp of two dam sinkers. David .James and James I’oole. The dam sinkers listened to his story, then went with him to the Hill, and the three of them pegged out 10 acres. Back then to Mount Gipps, whore McCulloch extracted fronr Rasp what had been done. ‘•’We’ll all go ill together." he said, "and peg out the whole hill.” 'Hull night in the Mount Gipps homestead the .syndicate of seven was formed—Charles Rasp, George McCulloch, George UTquhart (sheep overseer), George Bind f storekeeper and bookkeeper). Philip Charley (station hands). David James and James Boole. The news of the pegging reached Silverton. and became the joke of the town. Tin. or anything else, for that matter. 011 the hill of mullock! Even the members of the syndicate failed to maintain interest. Only Hasp insisted

Hint there was tin at the Broken Hill.

There mine into the syndicate | William Jamieson, milling surveyor for the New South Wales Government. A. station hand named, A. Cox bought a share from McCulloch for £l2O, tins price being decided at a rubber of euchre! Jamieson put new life into the syndicate; Basil’s shaft was sunk; calls of 10s a week ; were paid to finance the work. In ! November, 1881, the faith of the | syndicate was justified. Chlorides of I silver were found, assaying 700 oz to i the ton of ore. Richer surface silver 1 was found in April, 1885. In June I that year the Broken Hill Propric tary Company was formed •. 2000 shares issued to the public. Of the original syndicate of seven only four remained—Hasp. (McCulloch, Charley and James. T’rqnhart and Lind retired early; Boole sold his fourteenth share for £4500. And with the formation of this company Silverton admitted that the Broken Hill was more than a hill of mullock. It had now become the hill of silver. In 1887 the railway came to the new town.

East on its heels came ordered development. Silverton was Ll'.oii only a wayside station, as it is now. So have the mining towns risen to great glory and fallen into dismal decay. From the formation of the 8.11. P. | Co. Broken Hill has never looked | baric. Along the three, miles of the line of lode many mines sprang up in the years that followed 1885. Circling the hill of silver a town sprang

up ; a town that grow to a city of tint incoiisidernible beauty; of groat stability. By 1889 the population of the town had reached 17,000. Ju 101 I it was 33*000. To-day it is about 27.000. The third city in New South AVnles connected by rail direct with Sydney and with Adelaide. ]t possesses substantial public buildings, a jnodernly-ecjuipped technical college, fine schools, libraries, theatres and public gardens that are oases in the desert. And to show the wealth that has come front the hill that so long held its secret, these figures:—Value of output from 1885 to 192-1, €121,000,000; .ore extracted, 34,000.000 tons: dividends paid by mining companies, about £28*000.000. The ore developed and available in 1925 was estimated at 13,000,000 tons. The possibilities of more ore are unknown but considered limitless. From the syndicate of seven has

grown the great B.H.P. Co., with its iron mines at Hummocky Hill and Iron Knob; its smelting works at Port Pirie; its steel works at Newcastle; its own ships and tramways, its countless ramifications. And it seems that lead prices are going to bring to a stop the progress of the Silver City, undoubtedly one of the finest, from many points of view, in Australia. A thing to be deplored; to call up the thought. Better it had remained only a paddock in a sheep station, and a slumbering hill of i still holding its silver secret.