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The Albert Kersten Geo Centre
housed in the old Bond Store Free Store building on the corner of Crystal and Bromide Streets, was officially opened on Friday, December 17, 1993, by Mr Jeff Shaw, New South Wales Shadow Minister for Industrial Relations.
The Geo Centre is a unit of Broken Hill's Living Museum program and is designed to illustrate how the great mineral load,on which the mines and the city of Broken Hill have thrived for over one hundred years, was created, mined and processed. A number of panels many with working sections, show the geological structure of the area and are richly supported by a fine display of the minerals that have made Broken Hill famous. Other displays to be set up will show how the ore is mined and milled to facilitate the production of metals.
In the yard are large pieces of the various rock types found along the line of lode with descriptive panels explaining to the visitor what they are.
Also in the grounds behind the Geo Centre is a typical miner's cottage, It originally stood on Block 10 and in 1983 was moved to the High School and partially restored by students. When the school had no further use for it, the cottage was moved to this site at the Geo Centre and further restored for the Broken Hill Branch of the National Trust who aim to set it up with appropriate items of furniture and other items to give the atmosphere of the period in which it was built. It is not the intention to fully furnish it, which would lead to clutter.
As mentioned above, the Geo Centre is housed in the former Bond Store/Free Store building and a brief history of this building may be of interest.
The site originally consisted of Lots 11 and 12 of section 42, which comprised grants to Fred Smallpage (one time secretary of Burton's Brewery, Bromide Street) and C.P.Anderson. A timber and iron building with a cellar was erected on lot 11 and a timbered and canvas structure was erected by Anderson on lot 12.
The property was register to F.C.Smallpage of 27 August, 1889 and transferred to the South Australian Brewing Company on 18 January, 1911. It would appeared that the South Australian Brewing Company had occupied the site from an early date for the 'Barrier Miner' December 10, 1891, reported--
"The imposition of the new Customs duties has intensified the inconvenience felt for some time by the smallness of the bond store accommodation in Broken Hill. To overcome this the South Australian Brewing Company purposes erecting large stone buildings, of one or two stories, to occupy the block on which the company's small bond store now stands. The old store has became a public one, but the business of the company has extended so much that even in the past the accommodation has been little more than sufficient for the company itself. As the demand for storage in bond will now greatly increase, the erection of the new premises is to be undertaken with the object of supplying the public demand."
The new building when completed about 1893 had two large storage areas at the level of Crystal Street, an area behind these with the floor raised to the level of a vehicle loading deck, and spacious cellars below with the usual openings at street level and barrel slides inside to assist the lowering and raising of barrels in the cellars.
In 1924 the property was purchased by B.Seppelt and sons who for a year or more prior to the purchase had tennanted the building. The transfer was registered on 8 February 1928.
B.Seppelt and Sons Ltd. used the building as a store and distribution centre for their wines and other products until shortly before the sale by auction on February 28, 1979, by which time they had arranged the transfer of their lisence for the building elsewhere in New South Wales. Some time prior to this sale the front portion of lot 12 has been sold to the Legion Club, next door.
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