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Mines/Australia

Broken Hill mine

Broken Hill mine, Australia. Producing, underground, mining silver, lead, zinc since 1883.

Why Broken Hill is famous

Mining has continued since 1883 and the city was listed on the National Heritage List on 20 January 2015. Mineral ids follow the project operations file.1,2,3,4

Story cards

Timeline

  1. 1883Charles Rasp finds the Broken Hill orebody5
  2. 1885Broken Hill Proprietary Company formed5
  3. 1895South Broken Hill silver mine airblast6
  4. 1901Broken Hill South Mine rock fall7
  5. 1902Broken Hill Central Mine falls of earth8

Broken Hill today

Where silver is mined todayWhere lead is mined todayWhere zinc is mined todayMining in AustraliaBroken Hill Project (Thackaringa cobalt / base metals) project page

Where next

People

Worked hereEssington LewisHe started underground at Broken Hill and ran BHP by 1926.9

Events

HereSouth Broken Hill silver mine airblastGround failure at Broken Hill: an airblast in 1895 killed eight, and a ninth died.6HereBroken Hill South Mine rock fallThe regulator uses this Broken Hill rock fall as a case study of ground failure.7HereBroken Hill Central Mine falls of earthThe lode was up to 300 feet wide and the lowest levels were 800 feet down.8Led toCharles Rasp finds the Broken Hill orebodyRead what happened near Broken Hill: Charles Rasp finds the Broken Hill orebody.1Led toBroken Hill Proprietary Company formedRead what happened near Broken Hill: Broken Hill Proprietary Company formed.1

Places

Located inBroken HillBroken Hill sits at Broken Hill.1

Sources

  1. National Heritage listing Broken Hill City Council
  2. Wikidata entity Q270734
  3. 2020-21 Minerals Yearbook, Australia (advance release) US Geological Survey
  4. data/minerals/operations.csv (modern operations table) prospectortrails.com internal data
  5. History of Broken Hill Broken Hill City Council
  6. 1895 South Broken Hill Silver Mine case study (Learning from disasters) NSW Resources Regulator
  7. 1901 Broken Hill South Mine case study (Learning from disasters) NSW Resources Regulator
  8. 1902 Broken Hill Central Mine case study (Learning from disasters) NSW Resources Regulator
  9. Essington Lewis History Trust of South Australia (SA History Hub)

Pictures on this page: Essington Lewis 1945.jpg, not recorded on the file page (Public domain).

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Froth flotation and tailings by Nina111955, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pictures: South Africa: a crowd of people gathered outside The Goldfields offices in Johannesburg. 1896., Unknown (Wellcome Collection) (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Falu gruva, Lundberg, Bengt A / Europeana (CC0 1.0).