Broken Hill

Broken Hill had begun as a tent city for miners seeking a good wage. It was a no man's land: 'the bleakest and wildest on all God's earth, under a blazing sun'. Following the discovery of silver by Charles Rasp in 1884 - and what was, in fact, the world's largest known silver-lead-zinc ore body - thousands of men made the journey to Broken Hill.

This included Francis Fradd and his growing family who arrived sometime after 1907 from Burra, South Australia. Francis and Mary Magdalene Fradd (nee Opitz) had 5 children at this stage and had a further 4 living in Broken Hill which burgeoned as a mining centre attracting skilled men and labour from all over the world.

Broken Hill was seen by most as a temporary pitching post. It was a place to work. It was also a place to drink: by 1898 an estimated sixty licensed hotels were operating in the town. It was no place to make a home, and it was, apparently, no place for women.
In 1887 there were just 600 women in a population of 9,000. Some were wives and mothers, others were business owners running boarding houses or laundries, and a certain number worked as prostitutes.

By the 1890s, however, the numbers began to even out as miners elected to stay in the town and were joined by their wives. Many families lived in corrugated iron shacks with dirt floors, others in tents made from flour bags stitched together - a few were wealthy enough to live in stone cottages.

For many women, life was ruled by a strict routine: Monday for washing, Tuesday for ironing, Wednesday for cleaning, Thursday for mending, Friday for shopping, Saturday for cleaning, Sunday for church.
While their menfolk toiled under the earth, the women were faced with their own trials above it: ferocious dust storms, a frightening scarcity of water (Broken Hill had no permanent water supply until 1952) and almost no firewood.

Disease was rife, exacerbated by unsanitary conditions. In 1888, the infant mortality rate was double that in Sydney. Four midwives were registered in Broken Hill by 1892, and most babies were delivered at home.

The first state school opened in 1887, with two more to follow by 1889. Women would make up the teaching staff of the state schools for the next century, though school principals were invariably male. In 1889, eight Sisters of Mercy from the Maitland Congregation arrived to assist in providing care for the sick and needy, but also to provide education for the young. By 1891 there were 30 nuns in Broken Hill, and by 1896 they were operating five Catholic schools.

By 1907, when it was proclaimed a city, 9,000 men were employed on the mines persisting in an area where there is no permanent source of water, where the annual rainfall was less than 250 mm and where summer temperatures of 40 degrees were common. That Broken Hill has existed for over a century is probably its greatest achievement.

Families were badly hit by strike conditions in the early twentieth century.

In 1909, unionists refused to accept wages and working conditions and BHP announced a lockout. Women formed a Relief Committee to help those struggling to feed and clothe their families, and thousands marched in support of their men. In 1916, militant union members pushing for a 44-hour week were fired and 3,000 union members went on strike in protest. The stoppage lasted just eight weeks, largely because Broken Hill's metals were essential to the war effort. Mine managers accused their workers of being unpatriotic, but the city of Broken Hill hosted wartime fundraising events as well as any other town.

Broken Hill Lockout 1909

There were four major strikes that took place between 1889 and 1920 in Broken Hill.

During the four months from July to November 1892, both local miners and Women's Brigade were active in defending the mines from imported labour using organised  direct action methods. The strike collapsed after several strike leaders were arrested and tried for 'unlawful conspiracy and inciting riots', found guilty and sentenced to imprisonment and it became impracticable for locals to defend the mines from imported labour.

In 1909 picketing was introduced by unions during a violent strike. BHP leases are patrolled by the company and, as intimidation, mock graves set up bearing derogatory ‘epitaphs’ of union members. The strike lasts several months but miners return to work for the same pay rates and hours – 48 hours a week.
The final and the most severe strike lasted eighteen months between 1919 and 1920, based upon union demands for improved working conditions. The mines were a death trap. Pneumatic drills were dubbed 'widow-makers'. Those who escaped injury were more than likely to suffer from pneumoconiosis, tuberculosis, pneumonia or 'dust on the lungs'. The strike was long and bitter. Malnutrition meant that infant deaths rose from 99 per 1,000 births in 1918 to 147 per 1,000 in 1919. It was, however, the catalyst for great change. Unions combined to form one governing body, the Barrier Industrial Council (BIC). Working hours were reduced, ventilation installed in the mines, and some compensation paid. The new industrial working conditions became law in the Broken Hill Workers' Compensation Act.

For women, the formation of the Barrier Industrial Council had one particularly direct consequence. In 1930, the president of the Council passed a resolution to ban married women from working in Broken Hill. The policy was intended to diminish unemployment by holding clerical and retail jobs open for young, single women, encouraging them to stay in the city. It was felt that a miners' wage was sufficient to keep his wife and family. The policy stayed in place for more than fifty years. Married women who were professionally trained were permitted to keep their jobs, provided there were no qualified single women available, and plenty did so. Some nursing sisters established private hospitals as the Broken Hill Hospital closed for financial reasons during the 1930s depression.

In 1932 the worldwide depression was at its lowest point and unemployment in Australia was almost 30 percent. In Broken Hill, many single men are evicted from boarding houses and, in desperation; they build a shanty town on the site of the original municipal power station. Locals call it the ‘chateau de tar drums’ because dwellings are made from drums half filled with stones and roofed over with flattened kerosene tins. The place becomes a haven for swagmen. They arrive on the Silverton Tramway steam train and as it slows at the Pell Street crossing, jump down and scurry towards the chateau to avoid police patrols.

Bibliography:  http://www.womenaustralia.info/exhib/bh/intro.html