Broken Hill has been called the Silver City, the capital of the outback, the oasis of the West. |  |
Broken Hill was founded in 1883 by a boundary rider called Charles Rasp who thought he discovered tin, but instead discovered silver and lead. The origan of the name Broken Hill came about from the original formation of the land comprising of a number of hills that appeared to have a break in them. Those original formations no longer exsist as they have since been mined away. |  |
Before the 1940s, mining was achieved via hand with a high labor force included horse-drawn carts underground. In the 1940s the use of diesel powered mining equipment was introduced and as technology progressed underground mining became more mechanised, thus reducing the workforce considerably. |  |