Blogs+and+Reflections

=Mining in Broken Hill | Explore the impact of mining in Broken Hill since the 1880's, focusing on transport, technology, society and environment. What does the future hold for Broken Hill? = = =

Here are a few blogs about our work so far...

Saturday 24th March - Bec and Ivy
Today was the first day of the weekend, and it was certainly adventurous. We had an early start to travel long distances to Silverton where we were able to ride camels for the FIRST time! It was definitely a new experience.

Another new experience was touring the Silverton DayDream Mine, where we had a tour on the surface as well as underground. Going to this mine, Rebecca and I were looking forward to finding more relevant information and hoping to find beneficial things that we may not have heard or seen before, since this was a hands down experience.

We started of with a surface tour of the mines where we looked at how mines were entered, transport into the mines as well as the temporary wood and brick houses made by single miners. Since we already had an idea of the different techniques used in mining, we asked the tour guide what kind of technique was used to make the mine, and were left rather confused when the tour guide answered with 'hard rock mining', which was not really the answer we were looking for. We believed that a lot of the facts that we retrieved were exclusive to the Day Dream Mine only, so we considered them irrelevant to the overarching question, but we still managed to take many notes about the Silverton mine.

However, an interesting part of the surface tour was when the tour guide talked about the age of miners in the past, where boys as young as 12 years entered the mines in order to support their families, before a law was passed later to regulate the minimum age as 18. Another interesting idea was of the miners, working a long day in the mines, breathing in dust and harmful substances that made them sick and tired after. In order to prepare themselves for the next day, many of them would smoke opium to keep them going, which is an interesting idea considering their lifestyle.

Also, backfill, which we had originally believed to be used solely for the purpose of supporting roofs, were also used to help with ventilation. If there were wide open spaces, the air that entered would circulate inside, with nowhere to exit, meaning that the air would become bad and stale. With backfill, it meant that there would be an ongoing amount of clean air entering and exiting, allowing for better ventilation.

Underground, we were able to enter mines, which had a rocky rough ground and a low ceiling. It really gave many of us a sense of claustrophobia and definitely left a mark on the reality of what happened in the past. The mines were complex systems of paths with uneven surfaces and crudely made steps. When head lights had not been invented, candles which blew out during a working period would mean lone miners resorted to crawling around the perilous mines.

In conclusion, from the day at DayDream Mine, we did not retrieve some of the information we had hoped to find, but it was still a great experience to be in a mine first hand, to believe and imagine being a miner in the past and the dangers that come with this activity, looking at the effort put in to get something out.

Friday 23nd March - Bec and Ivy
Everything we did today can be summed up in one word, 'Explore'. To start off, we had an hour of work time in the morning from 8:15-9:15. We found that yesterday, the teachers had looked through all the groups' learning questions and suggested a few changes. Ms Gunja suggested that we change our original question 'How has mining affected Broken Hill in the past, present and future?' to 'How has mining affected the lives of children in Broken Hill?’. We were rather surprised when we saw this as it was quite different to our old question and we had not investigated the impacts on children. After talking to Ms House and Ms Gunja, we decided not to go with the question about children but tweak our old one slightly so that it has a narrower focus. We worked with Ms House and finally agreed on 'Explore the impact of mining in Broken Hill since the 1880's, focusing on transport, technology, society and environment.’ Also, ‘What does the future hold for Broken Hill?'. We were very happy with this change as it made our project clearer and gave us a better idea on what to explore and what time period to research.

For the rest of the time, we worked on annotating the booklet we received from Angela. Yesterday, we had highlighted all the relevant information but today we briefly summarised the information in red pen. We believe that this activity really helped us to see which areas we needed more information on and properly processed and linked information to each other.

Next, we went with Ms Cordaro to the library as it was our research option for the day. To our surprise, we found out that the man who was going to be helping us was Brian Tonkin, whom Angela recommended us to talk to. As we already had quite a lot of information about society and technology, we decided to focus on transport. Brian was very helpful and found many sources that had information on railway systems. We continued annotating the booklet and after finishing, we planned a few questions that we were going to ask in the interview with Brian. During the interview, we asked him more about the future of Broken Hill and the transportation systems. He knew a lot of information on mining and also told us about important events that occurred and his opinion on mining. He believed that mining had been mainly beneficial to the environment and the community although there were a few detrimental impacts. During those short two hours, we gained a lot of knowledge on railway and mining however we both felt that the thing that was the most beneficial to us, was his personal opinion on how mining has affected them as a community. This is because we can always gather knowledge from different sources however everyone's opinion is different and so we also get different perspectives and insights.

Next, we had two hours of free time and we were allowed to explore Argent Street in small groups of three or four. However, Ivy and I wanted to go to the State Office Block that Angela recommended and so after getting the teacher's permission, we headed to the government building. On the way, Ivy discovered that the Amalgamated Miners Association's building was also one of the buildings located on the same road. We wanted to go inside and interview the workers there however when we reached it, we realised that it had although the building remained the same, it was now the Broken Hill Veteran and Vintage Car Club.

At the State Office Block, most of the people that worked there were away at the moment however we interviewed Katie, an environmental officer and she gave us many relevant facts on environmental regulations the government had in place. She also suggested that we go see the Photographic Recollections Exhibit that was held in Broken Hill. Another person that was there helped to give us many pieces of information including:

- pamphlets on mining - historical photos - old maps of Broken Hill - contact details of Bob Johnson - a retired man who used to work with the State Office and is very knowledgeable about mining. - Directions to the Trades Hall, where she believed we could interwview a lady called Ms Cameleerie, who knew a lot about the history of Broken Hill.

Since most of the usual workers were away, the ones there didn’t really know much about mining and so we didn’t get as much information as we had hoped. However, they were very helpful and provided us with many leads to others who had more knowledge about what we were looking for.

When we finished at the State Office, we went to the Trades Hall to look for Ms Cameleerie and find out more about mining but when we arrived, we discovered that she was out at the moment.

After spending another hour roaming around Argent Street, we met up again at the Police Station. We had decided to go to the Photographic Recollections Exhibit as Katie suggested it to us, so off we went with Ms Cordaro and a small group of girls.

We were both extremely glad that Katie had suggested it to us, as it turned out to be very helpful and one of the most beneficial places we had been to so far. This was because the exhibit was a photographic timeline of Broken Hill's history and since the foundation of it is the mining industry, most of the information was about how mining has developed. It included the miners' lifestyles, techniques, transport systems, unions and strikes. Cliff Braes, the man in charge of the exhibit was also very helpful and allowed us to interview him. One of the most beneficial parts of the interview, was when he explained the different mining techniques. Previously, all the techniques we had researched sounded similar and we weren’t sure how they worked as the sources we looked at used mining jargon that we didn’t understand. However, with the help of visual photographs and Cliff explaining step by step how each technique worked, we understood it much better and it cleared up a lot of confusion. One of the things that wasn’t so good with the interview, was the quality of the actual recording. It was quite noisy whilst we were recording as girls were running around in the background so in some sections, you couldn’t hear what he was saying.

Overall, we were extremely pleased with our work today. We believe that we have gotten a lot done and now have much more information to use. We also understand our topic much better and have discovered so much more about Broken Hill. Even though it is a very small community, it holds so much history and

Thursday 22nd March- Bec and Ivy
In the morning, we were fortunate enough to have a boat ride hosted by Malcolm the boat man. He knew a lot about the community and its connections. He said quite a few interesting things that we took note of when he was talking to us:

Mining creates a lot of jobs in the community and provides a reliable economy especially providing jobs for young people. These large companies pay the younger people higher wages, which the local businesses are not able to compete with. So, when local businesses need younger workers, they are given less opportunities due to the fact that they can't afford the high wages mining companies are giving them.

Although mining creates a lot of jobs, the skills needed for the activity can not necessarily be incorporated into other service jobs and activities, e.g. working with customers in local businesses. This means that when the young people can not work in mines, they are not trained to work anywhere else, giving them less opportunities based on their lack of skill.

Therefore, a growing gap is dividing the Broken Hill community into two economies- a mining economy and local businesses. So mining is not necessarily connecting the local community and in fact, creates a division within.

Today, we were able to have the opportunity to work on our research. We were finally able to read through all the information the lady gave us yesterday at the Mining and Minerals Museum. We read, processed and evaluated the information given to us, and looked at what would and wouldn't be able to support our over-arching question. There were times when we disagreed and had to discuss carefully whether or not, extra sub-headings would be needed.

In the booklet, there was definitely a lot of information about the relationship of mining to Broken Hill. There was a substantial amount to take in, and we tried our best to differentiate what was relevant and what was irrelevant. It took a while as the booklet was over 40 pages long, and had many subheadings, which not only helped us into characterising them into __our__ subheadings that we had created earlier, but also confused us where information fitted into more than one. It was a productive session as we were able to differentiate and evaluate the information we had so far, and being able to summarise it. Sometimes, it is hard when there is only two of us in a learning team as our judgements and decisions mattered more to the end product, compared to one person's opinion in a group of five or six.

Wednesday 21st March - Bec and Ivy
Today was one of our research days and we went to the Albert Kersten Mining and Minerals Museum. On the way there, we started brainstorming questions to ask because we were planning on interviewing people that worked there. As we had worked on our project last night, we were more prepared than we were yesterday.

First we went on a self guided tour around the museum. It was very helpful for us as we learnt about the techniques the miners used and also which types of minerals were mined. While we were walking around, we also finalised our overarching question. We decided on 'How has mining affected Broken Hill in the past, present and future?'. Originally we were only going to talk about the past and present however after listening to Bushy talk about the future of mining in Broken Hill, it made us think about what would happen once the minerals ran out and so we included it in our question.

After deciding on the questions we were going to ask, we went to interview Angela, one of the workers at the museum. She was very knowledgable and knew a lot about mining. One of the interesting things we found out from the interview was that the mines in Broken Hill actually aren't working at full capacity due to the global financial crisis. When asked her opinion about the future of mining, Angela told us that she didn't believe the mines would run out anytime in the near future as there was still so much to mine. __Although__ this is only one person's opinion and may not be completely true, it gave us a different view and an insight to what the citizens of Broken Hill thought about mining. She was very helpful and gave us a booklet which the museum had prepared for an exhibit a while back. In it, it had information about the living conditions of miners, the Unions, and also general demographics about Broken Hill. As Broken Hill is all based around the mining industry, anything that affects the mining also affects the city and vice versa. She also gave us the contact details of a few people that would know more about mining.

Our trip today to the mining and mineral museum was extremely beneficial as we discovered many things about mining. It also gave us a clearer view of where we are heading and which topics to __focus__ on. Although it is only the second day in Broken Hill, we have already gained many people's opinions and thoughts on how mining has affect Broken Hill.

Tuesday 20th March- Bec and Ivy
Having now gotten to Broken Hill, we have realised that our topic of Opal Mining was rather too restricted, and therefore have adapted and changed our overall topic to just 'Mining'. This was after our visit to Kevin 'Bushy' White's Mining Museum, which was filled with artistic pictures of the mining lifestyle, mining techniques etc. produced by Bushy himself.

On the bus to the museum, we produced some general questions that we could be able to ask Bushy about mining. However, we were quite unprepared as we did not have a solid __survey__ produced before our visit to Broken Hill. We had not gone into depth in our research, and only had a vague idea of our issue.

On arrival to the visit, he showed us some interesting inventions, such as candle and drink holders. We were fortunate enough to have a talk given by Bushy himself, an ex-miner for over 25 years. We thought the talk was valuable in showing us, that our initial impression of the main resource mined was completely off. We had though it was opal but in fact, lead, silver and zinc are the most abundant precious resources, one of the richest in the world.

In the talk, he mostly informed us about the lifestyle, mining terminology, and the process of retrieving the minerals from underground, and bringing them back up. He also talked about the various jobs of different people in the mine, in order to make the whole process work. In all honesty, we believed that the talk may not have helped us as much as we hoped, especially when talking about the mining techniques. The details we believed did not necessarily fit into our general idea of our overarching question. Nonetheless, the most interesting part in the talk was when Bushy was talking about the future, and how in 30-40 years time, Broken Hill, which solely survives on their mining However, we were able to get a general impression about the past, which was quite a good start. It would have been a better more useful experience if we were more organised and prepared specific questions to ask Bushy before.

We furthered our mining experiences in Broken Hill as we went to the Mining Memorial, to pay our respects to the local Broken Hill people who had passed away during Mining. The abundance of deaths in the early years, compared to the little deaths in later years just goes to show the huge improvement in the safety and well being of miners, and how more focus is put on making sure that miners have rights too.

At night, we were able to use some time in the gallery to work on our question. We brainstormed ideas for all three Explore, Express and Exhibit. In order to present our work, we looked at making a timeline of the photos we took on the train as each hour passed, and making a panorama of something to do with mining (not quite decided yet). We were able to improve and further our process of reaching a general idea of our over arching question and more understanding of what we were heading for. We divided our subject of mining into several sub-headings, such as stories, important events, safety, lifestyle, mining techniques, transport. We also discussed the different places where we would be able to find valuable and useful information.

Overall, it was a good day where we cleared out our many thoughts and ideas, and began to work towards starting this Broken Hill Project.