The Big Picture

Measuring a little over one metre tall this photographic portrait is of Charles Rasp (1846-1907), the man credited with finding silver at Broken Hill and establishing the now British-owned mining company BHP (Broken Hill Proprietary Company) in 1885. For decades the settler population at Broken Hill has celebrated Rasp as the city’s ‘founding father’, including […]

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United They Stood

Broken Hill is known to the outside world as a stronghold of trade unionism, in addition to being the place where Australia’s first thirty-five hour week was granted. This reputation and milestone in the history of employment relations in Australia was the result of the historic strike action taken by miners in 1909 and 1919 […]

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Discoverer of Rare Mineral Murdered

Raspite is recognised as a form of the lead tungstate mineral Stolzite and was named after the boundary rider and prospector, Charles Rasp, by the Natural History Museum in Vienna. Rasp’s 1883 claim on the Mount Gipps Station in New South Wales’ far west led to the founding of the Broken Hill Proprietary Company (BHP). […]

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All Aboard the Tom Mann Train

Armed with just three years of schooling, British socialist Tom Mann became a globally influential union organiser during the early 1900s. When living in Australia he spent time on the historic 1909 picket lines at Broken Hill. His influence and time in the mining-town was documented by several local photographers, including James Wooler and the […]

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The Boundary Rider Who Founded BHP

Born Germany in 1846, Charles Rasp (1846-1907) arrived in Melbourne in 1869. Although his early years in Australia were spent as an itinerant agricultural worker he went on to become one of the founders of the Broken Hill Proprietary Company (BHP) and ended his days a very wealthy man. After a few years working on […]

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Broken Hill’s Kind-hearted Grocer

Born in Northern Italy in 1883, Emanuel Pedergnana was just 18 when he migrated to Australia in 1901. Although almost illiterate, the plucky young man went on to lead a successful strike action, work on the mines and own two retail businesses after settling in Broken Hill. Emanuel first found work at St Herberts, a […]

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