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In January 2015, the City of Broken Hill was included on the National Heritage Register. This register lists 106 other iconic landmarks such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Kakadu National Park, and the Australian Alps. Broken Hill is the first city to be listed. Extensive research and consultation with the Broken Hill community was a key part of the listing.

The National Heritage List is Australia’s pre-eminent heritage list recognising and protecting the nation’s most valued natural, indigenous, and historic heritage sites. Listing is the highest heritage honour in Australia and listed placed receive national attention and benefits from increased domestic and international tourism. Broken Hil has been assessed against the nine National Heritage Criteria, which include historic, aesthetic, and social values, creative and technical achievements, associations with significant peoples, and others.

The following is the Statement of Significance for the City of Broken Hill which was prepared as part of the listing process:

“The City of Broken Hill has outstanding significance to the nation for its role in creating enormous wealth, for its long, enduring and continuing mining operations, and the community’s deep and shared connection with Broken Hill as the isolated city in the desert, its outback landscape, the planned design and landscaping of the town, the regeneration areas and particularly the physical reminders of its mining origins such as the Line of Lode, the barren mullock heaps, tailings, skimps and slagheap escarpment and relict structures. It exhibits historic qualities in its ongoing mining operations since 1883, the current and relict mining infrastructure and its landscape setting. It is significant for its industrial past ….. together with its role as a pioneer in setting occupational health and safety standards.”

“It demonstrates the principal characteristics of a mining town in a remote location with extensive transport infrastructure and administrative connections to three state capitals and as a rare example of a place subject to Australia’s complex Federal system where differing administrative, social and economic influences are expressed in both tangible and intangible forms. It has social significance for its residents as a place of community pride, endurance, and as a remote mining community resilient to major social and economic change, Broken Hill has strong social significance for all Australians as a place where great wealth was created, as well as strong group associations with the Barrier Industrial Council. It exhibits outstanding aesthetic characteristics as a city in an arid desert setting, as the subject of interest for Australian artists, poets, film makers, TV producers and photographers.”

“It has significance as a place where outstanding technical achievement has occurred in refining ore for its minerals including the froth flotation process and the computer controlled on-stream analysis of slurries. Broken Hill is also important as a place of research potential to reveal further information on mineral deposits with its range of complex minerals. It is associated with person of great importance to Australia’s history, including Albert Morris (arid land regeneration), Charls Rasp (discoverer), Herbert Hoover (mining engineer), WL Baillieu, WA Robinson and MAE Mawby (industrialists), GD Delprat (metallurgist), Percy Brookfield and Eugene O’Neill (unionists). Broken Hill’s association with the Barrier Industrial Council as a group is also important.”

“The Broken Hill zinc-lead-silver ore deposit is one of the world’s largest ore bodies and contains an extraordinary array of minerals. It is geologically complex and has national scientific significance. The Broken Hill operation is significant for its immense size and unrecorded mineral species continue to be found. It contributes to an understanding of the formation of the Australian continent and more than 2, 300 million years of the earth’s history.”

The City of Broken Hill is delighted that the special heritage values of the city are recognised and celebrated nationally and internationally by this listing.

Wilyakali Country:

Wilyakali lies in the east of the state of South Australia, crossing into New South Wales, including the town of Broken Hill. The Wilyakali people traditionally visited the Paakantji people on the Menindee Lakes in the Darling Riverine Plains Bioregion each year.

The three Major language groups for the Broken Hill Region are the Paakantji, Mayyankapa, and Nyiimpaa.

Wilyakali and Danggali both lie east of the Ngadjuri language and north of the upper River Murray languages.

Wilyakali and Danggali are part of the Darling River Language Group or Paakantyi / Paakantji language group. This is a group of closely related languages in South Australia and New South Wales, which can be subdivided into two groups: the “Northern Dialects” and the “Southern Dialects.” Wilyakali and Danggali are both part of the “Southern Dialects.”

Other “Southern Dialects” include Pulaali, Southern Pankantyi, Pantyikali, Wanyuparlku and Marrawarra. Some of these languages have been recorded more than others. Although each language has its own distinguishing features, they are so similar they can be understood by speakers of other languages in this group. Therefore, the following reference list will include Southern Paakantyi references that may be helpful. The language name is noted in square brackets after each reference, when known.

Today the Wilyakali people are still the main Aboriginal group in Broken Hill, though there are a number of Aboriginal people that come from other language groups.

The Aboriginal people of Broken Hill have established working parties to pursue their vision of a better future. They continue to look after their traditional lands and are joint managers of the Mutawintji National Park which is the first national park handed back to the traditional owners in New South Wales. There are many strong elders who continue to maintain and pass on their traditional knowledge to their young people and, today, share their stories with the wider community.

Source: Broken Hill: A Guide to the Silver City by Elizabeth Vines, Mobile Language Team, & Aboriginal Housing Office.

GD Jewels v2 by Grace Darkling

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IMG_5035 by Trung Ngoc