A Backblocker's Pleasure Trip

Whether you arrived by day or night, in rain or shine, you heard Broken Hill before you saw it. Its vital organs, the batteries and mills at the mines, were always thumping. Though the city, which was clustered on two flats, separated and hidden one from the other by the big silver hill, had a population of 35,000, you could hear its heart-beats when you had left it all behind. If its battering throbs stopped for a night, the people couldn't sleep. They missed the noise. Likewise, the whole business of their lives was regulated by the shift whistle. They got up by it, they had their meals by it and they went to bed by it. It was their time-keeper.

It was Paddy Green, of Menindie, who made the first discovery of silver lead ore on the Harrier. That was in 1876, in the vicinity of Thackaringa. Seven years later Charlie Rasp, who was employed as a boundary rider on Mount Gipps, struck the first colour at Broken Hill, then part of Mount Gipps run. He had the veteran prospector's eye for likely places, and by means of his inveterate habit of fossicking here and there while on his lonely rides among the rocky, mulga covered ridges, the world's greatest silver mine was located. From these inhospitable looking hills, with bleak and barren surroundings, millions of ounces of silver were exported annually to India, China and Japan, besides large quantities of lead and zinc concentrates to England and Europe. Copper, gold, antimony and other minerals were also obtained from the same sources, but the principal wealth of the mines was in silver and lead. It was practically the output of this one rich field that placed Australia fourth on the list of the world's pig-lead producers.