Photos

This is the Miners Memorial at Broken Hill, a remote desert outpost in New South Wales, about 1100 miles west of Sydney. The town began in the 1830s when a fence rider found a lump of stone and sent it to be analyzed. It led to the discovery of one of the riches sources of silver, tin and zinc in the world. All the mines, save one, have closed now and the town has become rather sleepy (it’s one of the hottest and driest places on the planet.) What you see is a mountain made from the waste, dug up from the mines over the years. This ridge stretches for over 7 kilometers. The monument on top was started in the year 2000 and commemorates the, more than, 700 men and boys , who lost their lives in the mines over the years. The mining company, BHB Billiton, (the BH stands for Broken Hill) went on to become the biggest mining company in the world. The monument is made of iron and is made to resemble mine shaft underground.