Indigenous Australians were the original residents of the region. They lived in small villages of large huts made by bending saplings and securing them to the ground. Branches, grass and clay were then placed to construct the walls and roof. Around March of each year, they would harvest and thresh various local native grasses to obtain seeds to make a type of flour for subsistence. Large heaps of harvested grass were collected like haystacks.[4]
1845 painting of an Aboriginal village near Milparinka
In 1844, Charles Sturt's expedition was stranded for six months at nearby Preservation Creek, owing to a lack of supplies.[4]
In 1880, a local Indigenous woman showed prospector James Evans gold nuggets lying on the surface of Mt Browne. Evans subsequently obtained 24 ounces of gold and a rush to the region commenced soon after.[5][6] The mostly-male population of the Mt Browne goldfield at peaked at 3,000, with W.H.J. Slee being appointed the resident Goldfields Warden in January 1881. Cobb &Co coaches ran three times a week from Milparinka to Wilcannia on the Darling River (the closest settlement, as Broken Hill did not yet exist) and by August 1881 the official gold escort had carried about 10,000 ounces of gold from the field, not to mention that which went privately.[7]
Milparinka Hotel, Milparinka, NSW 1976.
In this arid region, water was so scarce that miners collected their gold by dry blowing. Water was selling for one shilling per bucket and dysentery was rife, until in September 1881, on the recommendation of W.H.J. Slee, the New South Wales government authorised the drilling of a well.[8] In December 1881, the government well struck water at 140 feet, which caused great relief to all.[9][10]
At its height, Milparinka had a newspaper, a police office, a chemist shop, two butchers, a courthouse (1886), a school (1883), a hospital (1889) and four hotels.[11]
There was drought in 1884.[12]
In June 1902, a large meteorite landed at nearby Mt Browne.[13]
^"News of the Day". Sydney Morning Herald. 11 February 1882. p. 5.
^"Mount Browne diggings". The Argus. Melbourne. 22 September 1881. p. 7.
^"Intercolonial Telegrams". The Argus. Melbourne. 30 December 1881. p. 5.
^McQueen, Ken (2007). "A thirsty and confusing diggings: the Albert Goldfield, Milparinka-Tibooburra, north-western NSW". Journal of Australasian Mining History. 5 (Sep 2007): 67–96.
^"Milparinka". Sydney Morning Herald. 8 February 2004.
^"The Albert Gold-fields". The Sydney Morning Herald. 18 August 1884. p. 8.
^Ramdohr, Paul (1973), The Opaque Minerals in Stony Meteorite