Drought takes toll on Australian farmers (Potrebbe 2024)
Broken Hill, città mineraria, centro-occidentale del Nuovo Galles del Sud, Australia. Si trova sul fianco orientale della Main Barrier Range, a 30 miglia (50 km) a est del confine degli Stati con l'Australia meridionale.
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Conosciuta come la Città d'Argento, Broken Hill è situata su uno dei depositi più ricchi di argento, piombo e zinco. Il sito, in una regione calda e subarida, è stato visitato per la prima volta nel 1844 da Charles Sturt, che ha chiamato la gamma gobba di Broken Hill. L'insediamento fu fondato dopo la scoperta del piombo e dell'argento nel 1883. Le attività di estrazione furono sviluppate dalla Broken Hill Proprietary Company, Ltd. (ora BHP Billiton), fondata nel 1885. Fu dichiarata comune nel 1888 e divenne una città nel 1907. Il Consiglio industriale della barriera, una fusione di sindacati formati nel 1925, rimane una forza influente negli affari civili della città.
The mining field is one of Australia’s greatest mineral assets, producing huge quantities of ore (Australia, the world’s largest exporter of lead in the early 21st century, extracted most of its recorded production of lead from Broken Hill). Crude ore is milled in the city; lead concentrates are then shipped to Port Pirie (South Australia) for refining. Zinc concentrates for smelting and refining are sent by railway to Cockle Creek or Port Pirie or are exported to Tasmania. Both concentrates are a source of sulfur for the manufacture of sulfuric acid. The city is also the centre of the West Darling pastoral area. Broken Hill’s commercial relations are principally with South Australia, because a rail connection was completed to Adelaide, 340 miles (550 km) southwest, in 1887, and there was no such link to Sydney (570 miles [915 km] east) until 1927.
Broken Hill has a community college, hospitals, shops, and hotels. It is the base for a Royal Flying Doctor Service clinic and a School of the Air (which conducts school lessons via radio for outback children). Broken Hill is linked by air and rail to most major Australian cities and is at the junction of the Silver City and Barrier highways. Water is pumped from as far away as the Darling River (70 miles [110 km] east). The city has developed regeneration areas around itself—tracts of native vegetation planted on denuded soil—to halt the threat of drift sand coming from land once used for mining. The Menindee Lakes on the Darling form a 40,000-acre (16,000-hectare) recreation area. Pop. (2006) local government area, 19,361; (2011) local government area, 18,517.
