PROGRESS ON THE BARRIER BROKEN HILL
The first record of an organised body to foster the development of civic requirement was a meeting of citizens which took place at the conclusion of a sports meeting on Boxing Day 1885.
It was resolved to put before the New South Wales Government the needs of the village.
First priority was given to a public tank and secondly the provision of a telegraph.(The telegraph line came via Silverton in 1886) In October, 1885, the Broken Hill village reserve had been proclaimed.
On November 8, the first meeting of the Broken Hill Progress Committeewas held.
One of their first actions was to request that the mail coach route from Silverton to Mount Gipps (thence to Sydney via Wilcannia and Bourke) should take in BrokenHill. The request was granted and a road cut through Argent Street in order to facilitate the passage of coachs. Prior to this the only communication with the outside world had been the horse and bullock wagons which brought in supplies from Petersburg (now Peterborough) in South Australia.The waterless course taken by these early teamsters and the difficulties of getting their cargo through might well be the subject of an epic in itself. The "Silver Age" of February 18,1888,indulges in some pungent criticism of the state of Argent street, which,it says, is the main Street of a town of 7,000 inhabitants, but would disgrace a Hottentot village. It is thick with dust and the absence of proper waste disposal results in "one gigantic stink" .Later in the year the section between Oxide and Delamore Streets was metalled. At this time, too, the Progress Committee organised a voluntary Board of Health, which dealt, amongst other things, with garbage removal. There was, however, no compulsion to use its service and before the proclamation of the Municipality (November 20 1888) there was neither organised finance nor authority to control the affairs of the town. In January 1889, the first plant was purchased by the newly formedMunicipality. It consisted of a horse, dray and harness.
Water in 1887 cost 4d.a bucket (holding less than four gallons) according to a newspaper article of that year.
There was no reticulation service in the own before the first pipeline from Stephens Creek in 1892 and even then it was many years before the outlying area-Railwaytown and South Broken Hill-received this vital service. Before the popularisation of showers with the institution of changehouses on the mines in the same year, there were few houses equipped with bathrooms, but even then it can be imagined that the comfort of cleanliness was a costly luxury. An old plan (1885) shows the,. In addition, the railway from Silverton was opened. The town acquired a daily newspaper by the simultaneous publication of the "Silver Age" in Silverton and Broken Hill. In that year, too, the original newspaper, the" Broken Hill Times", was taken over by the Barrier Miner. There were now two newspapers. The Broken Hill was growing up.
In the same year the present site was chosen for a new hospital.
In the early days the hospital at Silverton had cared for cases from Broken Hill. However, when Silverton protested about the strain this placed on its facilities, Broken Hill erected its first hospital on a site near the Silverton Tramway Company. It was a wood and iron structure containing four beds and costing 260 Pounds and 13 shillings to build. When stressed by such occurrences as a typhoid epidemic (not uncommon), surplus patients overflowed into the marquee.
The first hint of another far reaching development may be traced back to 1888.
On July 24,a prospectus was issued to launch the Broken Hill Ice Co. It is not recorded whether this company actually reached fruition. But it does mark the beginning of a development which was to revolutionise life in this arid city.
Ice works and later, of course, commercial and domestic refrigeration, replacing the water bag and coolgardie safe, may be placed next to adequate water supply as the greatest contribution to comfortable living. The opening of the Broken Hill Brewing Company was another landmark of this memorable year.
Yet although we have seen in embryo form so much that is now takenforgranted, we have traveled a long way along the road to comfort and security since the year 1888.
