So there was this thing…

So there was this thing…

My goal for today was to do a quick walking tour and head to a museum 20kms away and head to Cobar which is kinda a halfway point between Broken Hill and Lightning Ridge. What was supposed to be at 2 hour walking tour turned into a 3.5-hour walking tour. The guide, Ray, was very qualified about this mining town. Ray, now in his 80’s, is a former miner from Broken Hill. He was choca-block full of information about the founding of Broken Hill and the growth and modernization of the mines surrounding the town and area.

Let’s have a history lesson..

In the 1800’s Charles Rasp, a sheep herder, found a rock on top of the hill that looked like tin. Charles grabbed a sample and sent it off to Sydney for analysis. 3 months later, the reply came. It wasn’t tin but silver and lead. Upon finding out this information, he along with David James, George Poole, Phillip Charley, George Urquhart, and George Lind, organized the claim with George McCulloch who was the station manager of the land where the claim was to be made. The six men borrowed 100 pounds from George and put in a claim for 2 kilometers. They lived in bark huts for three months while getting the land cleared to start the extraction.

In 1883 It was up and running, then in 1886 they came across an aquifer. Now water and mining go hand in hand, unfortunately this aquifer was in a bad location. Pumps had to be installed to remove the water from the extraction area.

From 1886 to 1903 giant headframes were brough in to operate the lifts, and pneumatic drills and water extraction.

The Lift

In a mere 10 years of mining 240 men had died with the drill operation. What the men couldn’t see from candlelight was the mica flakes that were being jarred loose from the drill and floating in the air. Mica has the consistency similar to a fingernail. It would be inhaled then attach to the lung and create a tear that would never stop bleeding. Men would go into the mine to work, exit around 4 pm, cough up blood and stroll to the bar to drink and eat then start it all over again the next day. If a miner had money, they would move from the hotels/pubs to the opium dens to beat the pain they were in.

Horses were lowered into the mines as well. These horses were well cared for, unlike the pit ponies in the coal mines that would be blind within 6 months of no light.

BHP was the mining company that owned the mine and trust me, there to this day is still hard feelings against them and the union. Case in point, miners were charged 4 shillings for the shovel they used in the mine. If the lost it, they would have to purchase another shovel.

In 1918 the first strike ever in Australia took place and a union came in to bargain for better conditions for the miners. Men were tired of dying before 35. The strike lasted for 18 months and after 12 months of the Australian government losing money, they formed a health commission. Every miner had their lungs x-rayed. there were 6000 men x-rayed and of those 6000, 2000 couldn’t work in the mine again due to lead in their lungs. The union bargained for and won better wages, seven hour shifts underground, no night shift, hotels closed at 10 instead of 6, and hotels have to be closed on Saturday afternoons and Sundays to get the miner men to spend time with their families. If the hotels refused, they were forced to pay double time on the weekends. The bargaining took six to eight weeks to reach the agreement, and the miners couldn’t strike for 3 years.

Here’s a funny bit about the strike. During the strike the company brought in scabs to continue the work. The also brought in 140 policemen and a mounted brigade to protect the scabs. The wives in town would line up behind the policemen in their long white dresses and white hats with thick timbers in their hands and pummel the scabs over the policemen’s shoulders.

So here’s where the union turned into what we dislike about unions today.

You couldn’t work in the mine unless you were union. Married women weren’t allowed to work in Broken Hill. Each shop in town had a secret union steward working in the shop acting as a spy and if someone was married and working in the shop, the shop owner was notified that that woman had to be fired. If the woman wasn’t fired, the shop would be black balled. THIS RULE WASN’T CHANGED UNTIL 1983!

In 1973, the local paper was struggling so B.I.C. (Barrier Industrial Council) decided to purchase the paper with no vote. So now the miners had to pay 20 dollars for a union badge and 15 dollars for a paper four times a year. Those were the union dues.

There is so much more to the story of Broken Hill, but I won’t be like the college professor who keeps the students past appointed class time to get more information into overburdened minds. I encourage everyone to look up the history of this town and the union benefits and corruption that came into the town.

After the historical walk, I jumped on the bike to head to Silverton. Silverton is another mining town but quickly faded to a ghost town and movie set. In Silverton, there is a Mad Max 2 museum. Now admittedly, this movie came out before my time, but I do remember Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome so my interest was there.

There is a fantastic travel author named Bill Bryson who traveled to Australia. The book is called “A Sunburned Country” and I would encourage everyone to read or listen to it. Thanks to my friend, Sean, for suggesting it. In this book Bill mentioned a museum that was so bad, he paid for it twice to confirm how bad of a museum it was. This was the Mad Max 2 museum. It wasn’t the one mentioned in the book, but it is the one I am mentioning.

I got to the museum off a dirt track and the outside looked impressive.

I went through the door, paid my 10 dollars and was immediately told I could not take any pictures of the inside. All the pictures were from the movie set and were a private collection. Now, unless you lived and breathed this movie, the pictures made no sense. There were walls covered with 4×6 photos randomly shot on set with no description what-so-ever of the who, what, and why. There were also glass display cases of items that allegedly came from the movie set. Again, no pictures. What you could take pictures of where the cars in the back lot, behind chain link fence that were either reproductions, or actual vehicles used during the movie. Basically, someone went through a lot of time and money to create these vehicles and my ten dollars helped reimburse the museum owner.

Needless to say, I didn’t pay twice.

Now it was decision time. I am getting to the end of my holiday and still have many places to go but I have to prioritize them. The Great Barrier Reef is now off the list, along with Uluru, and Darwin. Time is counting down. My choices are to stay another night in Broken Hill or try and beat the thunderstorm and head to the next town 3.5 hours away that may or may not have accommodations. Due to the chin wagging at the pub I had stopped at for water and a meal, I decided to stay and hoof it to Lightening Ridge the following day. During the night, at around 12:15, I woke up sweating from lack of a fan. The power had gone out. Not just at the motel I was at, but the entire town. Come to find out, four large transformers had fallen over in the high winds from the storm. This means, no brekkie, no coffee, and no fuel for a few kilometers! Water was still running so I filled up my camelback and hit the road.

I will leave you with a piece of art from Pro Hart, a former miner who started the art movement in Broken Hill