Curio

State Library of New South Wales
Short Street scene, Hill End

Short Street scene, Hill End

1872
Glass photonegative

In 1861, Hill End's first census revealed a settled village of 36 dwellings with a population of 124 consisting of 76 males (24 married) and 48 females. By 1872, when this photograph was made, an estimated 7000 people lived in and around the town, including about 1200 underground miners, of whom one-third were Cornish. Hill End’s population in 2006 was just 166. Typical of a boom-and-bust gold town, every building in this phot+D84ograph has disappeared, the scene now being a grassy yard behind a rickety wooden fence.

From the Sydney Morning Herald, 25 May 1872

On a Saturday night especially trade is brisk, for the town is then full of miners, who come in from the surrounding district for their supplies. How they get in and out with safety is a problem rather perplexing to a stranger, seeing that all the occupied level country is full of deep pits, made when this was a surface diggings years ago, and which have not been filled... It is a grim view of the matter, but there must be holes enough already dug to form the graveyard of the community. [‘A trip to Hill End’, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 May 1872, p7]