Hi All,
As I said before this is not the info I have.
I think with the conflicting reports coming out it's time I ended this.
The answer to my question is 10 years.
I first read this in a book by Ion L Idriess called The Silver City first published in 1956.
He and his family left Tamworth for Broken Hill in 1900 and traveled to Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide then through South Australia to Cockburn then across the boarder to get to Broken Hill.
He writes on Page 34
"Broken Hill, of course, was a developed town. It was natural that the folk should think the mines would cut out, for such is the fate of most mining fields the world over. But how mistaken in this case!
They gave the field possibly ten years of life in 1900. During the fifty-five years since then the Hill has produced great wealth, and today there is no thought of the mine cutting out"
So I did a search in trove and found this article from 18 Dec 1899 in the Sydney Evening News confirming this opinion.
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/art...yyyy=1905|||l-word=*ignore*|*ignore*|||sortby.
So, what have we leaned?
There are differing opinions on every subject and it's great Australian History.
Now if you can excuse me, I'm going to the shed to pan out the con's from the weekend to see what is in there.
mbasko, I think it's your go.
Cheers
Mick