Broken Hill: Australia’s mining heart
By Mark Scott March 2015 WHEN Broken Hill became Australia’s first nationally heritage listed city, mayor Wincen Cuy spoke of the town’s “ever-present history” of mining and workers’ struggles. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Broken Hill was synonymous with Australia’s mineral riches and the country’s fighter for workers’ rights; often the two went hand-in-hand. As the namesake and birthplace of the world’s largest mining company, and the site of some of Australia’s most fierce industrial battles, the NSW town’s elevation to National Heritage status rightfully stakes its place in Australia’s history. The Broken Hill area, more than 1000km west of Sydney, was solely inhabited by the Wiljakali people until the 1840s, when European explorers first visited the area and…