This is Broken Hill and there’s nowhere else quite like it. It’s a true Australian Outback city in every sense. Broken Hill is a living breathing time capsule, where the great mining prosperity of yesteryear blends seamlessly with a modern thriving city located in a sprawling desert landscape.

Historically considered to be one of Australia’s boomtowns, the city has been referred to by a number of different names. The most common being The Silver City in honour of the discovery of silver ore in the area that led to the opening of several mines. 

Also sometimes known as the ‘capital of the outback’, Broken Hill has a rich history of mining and is considered to be Australia’s longest running mining town. The town area was named by the Australian explorer Charles Sturt in 1844. 

While exploring the area around the location of the town, Sturt named the Barrier Range and noticed a number of hills that appeared to have a break in them. Noting this he recorded this natural feature as Broken Hill in his diary. 

But the actual town was founded in 1883 by boundary rider Charles Rasp. One day while mustering sheep, Rasp, who was a trained chemist, thought he detected minerals in the formation of the broken hill that Sturt had referred to in his journal. 

Teaming up with local contractors, Rasp took out a mining lease on a part of Broken Hill and sank a small mining shaft into the ground. Before long he was joined by several other men forming a syndicate of seven, whose monuments stand in the heart of Broken Hill today. Finally, after a year of hard prospecting, they found significant quantities of silver. 

In order to mine the silver, the syndicate incorporated a new company, the Broken Hill Proprietary Company [BHP] which would go on to manage the mine and operates today as BHP Billiton, the world’s largest resource company.  

Twenty thousand tons of silver and more than 50 million tons of lead and zinc have been extracted from more than 200 million tons of ore in the BHP mines making it the largest and richest deposit of silver, lead and zinc in the world.

But it’s come at a cost. The iconic Line of Lode Miners Memorial stands on top of Broken Hill’s mullock heap as a sombre reminder of the hundreds of lives lost in the mines.  The mullock heap is 7kms long and is made up of the waste rock from the early mines.

Broken Hill was also known for being an active centre for camel trains and stock routes in the far west region of New South Wales, because from here the trade routes linked up to the railway. 

Camel trains made up a large part of Broken Hill’s history and they inspired a man by the name of Frank Bottrill to invent a machine designed to alleviate the struggles of the camels who laboured under their heavy loads in the harsh conditions of the outback.

Join us this week as we explore some of the history of Broken Hill, the camel trains and the innovative talent of a single man who tried to make a difference in the outback in our new program, [Camel Trains] and Big Lizzie. 

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CAMEL TRAINS

Today the [term] ‘camel train’ has become synonymous with getting to isolated and inaccessible parts of the Australian outback. A camel train consisted of 20-80 camels carrying food and supplies to isolated settlements, and surveying and construction teams in remote areas. Between 1850 and 1900 over 20,000 camels were imported to Australia from different parts of the world. 

With the camels came cameleers, men who were skilled in handling and driving the animals over vast swathes of desert. The cameleers came from a variety of different countries, ranging from Egypt and Persia right down to Afghanistan and India. All of these cameleers, regardless of their nationality, were referred to as ‘Afghans’, though in actual fact very few of them were from Afghanistan. 

There’s a monument, right in the very heart of the Sturt Park Reserve in the centre of Broken Hill that commemorates the centenary of the Afghan cameleers trek, and recognizes the significant contribution the cameleers made to the development of inland Australia. 

BURKE AND WILLS EXPEDITION

The first major inland expedition to use camels as the main form of transportation was when Burke and Wills set out to cross the continent from south to north in 1860. At the time the Victorian government imported 24 camels from India for the expedition. 

While ordering the camels to help with the expedition the Victorian Exploration Committee also understood that without the help of experienced camel drivers the animals would be comparatively useless. 

With this in mind, a small group of cameleers arrived in Port Melbourne in June of 1860, set to help guide and manage the camels alongside the other members of the expeditionary team. The relative success with using camels during the Burke and Wills expedition opened the door for more animals to be imported. 

In fact the Burke and Wills expedition wasn’t the only time camels were used to explore the interior of the continent.  At least seven other exploratory expeditions made use of camel trains and cameleers as they ventured out to new frontiers in central Australia. 

CAMEL TRANSPORT

From 1860 onwards, camels were used to service Australia’s inland pastoral industry. With a growing number of cattle and sheep stations dotting vast swathes of the outback, camel trains were used to transport goods and wool bales throughout the territory. 

The camels were ideal for carrying goods in the desert.  Their humps let them store up to 36 kilos of fat which they can live off for weeks and even months.  And they can travel long distances without water.  When a camel finally does find water, it can drink up to 150 litres in one go.  A bull camel in good condition could carry up to 600 kilograms and camel trains could cover 40 kilometers a day.

Camels are affectionate animals by nature and if you are lucky they’ll even give you a kiss. “Come on Delilah, give us a kiss…”

In addition to being indispensable to ferrying goods out into remote parts of Central Australia, camel trains were also used in important construction projects in areas of the continent that didn’t have adequate transportation links. 

ADVENT OF THE RAILWAYS

After the construction of the railway network in the Outback and with the advent of motor vehicles, Afghan camel trains became redundant and many of the camel drivers or cameleers returned to their homelands.

Most of the camels were released into the wild where they thrived and multiplied.  Today Australia has the largest camel herd in the world.  There are about 1 million camels roaming wild in the Red Centre and Outback Australia.

Along the various camel train routes Broken Hill was an important destination. Not only was it a flourishing mining town which offered ample opportunity for trade, it was also strategically located in an area where stock routes and camel train routes linked up with rail transport. 

Being a mining boomtown Broken Hill attracted people from all parts of the country eager to find work. Among those who came to the mines looking for work in the 1880s was Frank Bottrill. 

FRANK BOTTRILL’S DREAM

Bottrill, who had trained as an engineer and draughtsman, found work driving and maintaining the steam engines in the mines. While working in Broken Hill he came into contact with the camel trains in the area. 

Bottrill watched the camels labour under their heavy loads of wool and supplies, sweltering and grunting beneath an unforgiving Australian sun. The terrain was rough, and the expectations of the cameleers was high, often leaving the animals foaming and struggling. 

Camels were the best and only option, but even they were struggling. Being an engineer and an innovator, Bottrill thought that a traction engine could easily carry the bales of wool and other merchandise. He reasoned that this would alleviate some of the load placed upon the camels. 

Struck with the idea, Botrill decided to buy a traction engine and drive it to Broken Hill himself. At the time Bottrill was still in his teens, with all the unflagging fervour and idealism of youth fuelling his goal. 

Born in Adelaide in 1871, Frank Bottrill moved to Moonta at a young age and when he was old enough took up an apprenticeship with the local blacksmith. Before long he was studying other trades as well, which is how he came to dabble in engineering and draughting. 

He found work at the mines in Moonta and Wallaroo where he earned a certificate as a steam engine driver. It was this certificate that enabled him to find work at the mines in Broken Hill. 

Thoroughly inspired by his idea to buy a traction engine and drive it to Broken Hill, Bottrill solicited help from his relatives and managed to buy a traction engine in 1889. He then made the long drive from Morgan in South Australia to Broken Hill. 

It was a strenuous and often discouraging journey. More times than he could count, Frank’s machine got bogged in the sand drifts and he had to dig it out, which was a backbreaking and time-consuming endeavour. 

Finally, when his water supplies began to dwindle, Frank abandoned the engine and hiked to the nearest town.

During his long trek back to civilization, instead of being crushed by his failure, Frank began to dream up a bigger and better machine that could navigate the unforgiving terrain more efficiently than a camel and the traction engine he had just abandoned. 

It was then that his idea for the dreadnought was born. Later on, while working in the Tintinara district in South Australia clearing scrub Frank watched tractors skidding and losing traction on the sandy soil. Watching these machines, he began to crystallise an idea which he patented in 1906. 

He called it the dreadnought or pedorail. Frank’s machine, which he christened Big Lizzie, was basically a tractor on the wheels of a military tank. A sort of tractor/tank hybrid that could glide over desert sand without the usual difficulties.

TURNING POINT

While Frank was further perfecting his ideas for the dreadnought, he underwent a significant turning point in his personal life. In 1908 he moved to Victoria, where a series of Bible lectures were being held by Robert Hare, an itinerant minister from New Zealand. 

Frank was captivated by what he learned from the Bible and decided to become a committed Christian. He was baptised and his life was never the same again. It was also during these meetings that he met his wife, Margaret Young, who was a volunteer worker helping with the meetings. Frank and Margaret were married a year later.

Then in 1915 Frank finally decided to make good on his big dreams for the dreadnought. Renting a large yard in Richmond, an inner suburb of Melbourne, he began construction of Big Lizzie, the long dreamed of dreadnought.

BIG LIZZIE

Big Lizzie turned out to be a massive tractor fitted with special wheels that resembled a modern military tank, with metal plates beneath the moving wheels to keep them from getting bogged down. 

The massive contraption was capable of pulling two large trailers, each one over 9 meters long. When Frank Bottrill finished construction, Big Lizzie’s engine was the biggest and most powerful engine ever built in Australia up to that point. 

The dreadnought could travel a whopping 2km an hour and carry 827 bags of wheat. Once Frank was satisfied with the completed product, he and his wife Margaret began to make plans to drive Big Lizzie to Broken Hill. 

[From] their calculations they believed it would take them just nine months to get to Broken Hill, but they didn’t account for the terrible weather. It rained constantly and when they got to Echuca the river was in full flood. 

Faced with crossing a raging river, Frank realised that Big Lizzie was too heavy for the bridge. Deciding to try another route they made their way to Mildura, only to find the river there was completely flooded as well. 

While they were in Mildura, Frank and Margaret struggled to find a local church to attend. So, they invited their friends and neighbours to have church with them on Big Lizzie’s front deck. The massive machine was big enough to hold a small group of people. 

At first, people came for the novelty of having a church service on board a big, ungainly machine, and then they returned because they liked the Bottrills and the service. Not long after, a church minister by the name of Walter Scragg held some meetings in the area. 

Frank and Margaret and their small group of friends went to the lectures and helped to establish a new church in Mildura in November 1919. 

Five years later in 1924, when Frank had finished his work of clearing around 600 acres of land in the Mallee, he was forced to bid the trusty engine a somewhat sorrowful goodbye in Glendenning. They returned to Dareton where Frank started up a blacksmith business. 

For many years Big Lizzie lay abandoned in Glendenning until in 1971 she was transported here to Red Cliffs in Victoria and restored in time for the Jubilee celebrations. 

Today the enormous Big Lizzie tractor stands in Barclay Square, Red Cliffs, as a testament to the work this tractor did, clearing up to 50 acres a day as farmland for the largest World War I returned soldiers’ settlement in Australia, here around Redcliffs.

Though it seems that Frank Bottrill’s dream of lightening the load of pack camels carrying wool around Broken Hill was a failure, his innovation and determination led him to create a machine that assisted many returned soldiers who were living with war injuries, and contributed to the growth of several rural communities. 

Frank’s story holds quite a few lessons, the most significant being that even when things don’t pan out the way we hope, it’s important not to give up. Another lesson is that sometimes, even though we make the best plans with the best intentions, God might have a different path for us to walk. 

INTERESTING PARALLELS

Frank’s story bears an interesting parallel to the story of one of the greatest Bible scholars and reformers of all time: John Calvin. Now John Calvin was a French reformer, born in 1509 in Noyon, France. While he was studying at the University of Paris in the 1520s he had a conversion experience that changed his life. 

For most of his life Calvin believed that he needed to earn his way into heaven by doing a host of good deeds prescribed by the church. Then he came face to face with the central teaching of the Bible and the keynote of the reformation; an idea so radical that it upended his entire life. 

Calvin was confronted with the biblical truth that salvation is a free gift from God, not earned or bought but rather accepted by faith – by believing in Jesus. When Calvin fully grasped this truth, it changed his life and set him on a course that was both radical and dangerous. 

Determined to share the good news of salvation by faith with the people of his own country, Calvin embarked on a determined campaign. He went from house to house in Paris, giving Bible studies to whoever was willing to listen. 

Bit by bit the people he worked with began to accept the good news he shared but Calvin wanted to do more. He could see how the Reformation was making giant leaps in other countries like Germany but it seemed to be moving quite slowly in France. 

Finally, in 1533 he enlisted the help of one of his closest friends, Nicholas Cop, who was rector (another name for vice chancellor) of the Sorbonne or the University of Paris. As the head of the most powerful university in France, Nicholas Cop had access to opportunities that Calvin did not. 

PLOT AND COUNTER-PLOT

The two young men hatched a plot to share the central truth of the Bible, salvation by faith, during Nicholas’ inaugural address as rector on the 1st of November 1533. Unfortunately, their plans didn’t pan out the way they had hoped. 

The clergy of the church of the day did not want to hear that their prescribed methods for Christianity and faith were unbiblical, and so they tried to capture both Calvin and Cop and burn them at the stake for heresy. 

Calvin was warned by his friends that guards were on their way to his dorm room to arrest him, and he was forced to lower himself out his window using his bedsheets and then escape out of France with nothing more than the clothes on his back. 

But this failed attempt didn’t deter him. After some time away from home Calvin came back. He was determined to be a missionary for God in France and to spread the news of what Jesus offered, to anyone who would listen. 

FLEEING HOME

But once again religious unrest against these new teachings forced Calvin and many other reform-minded Christians to flee France, this time for good. After wandering through Strasbourg, Calvin made his way to Switzerland where he ended up settling in Geneva. 

But his heart still cried out for France. Even though he did good work in Geneva, sharing the Bible and establishing Geneva as the first model city of the Reformation, Calvin longed to accomplish what he had always envisioned; winning France for the Reformation and Bible truth. 

Eventually, in 1559, John Calvin established a training school for young men. The purpose of the school was to train young men to be missionaries and pastors to take the truths of the Reformation back into France. 

DIFFERING PLANS

As a result of this training school hundreds of young Protestant men crossed the border into France and began to share the good news. Together they established over 2000 churches all across the country. 

Today Calvin’s training school is known as the University of Geneva, one of the oldest and most respected Universities in Europe.  

The most interesting part of Calvin’s story is this: he had a vision and plans to establish the Reformation in France through his own efforts, but God had different plans for both France and him. 

Instead of staying in France and establishing the work himself, Calvin was forced to flee and settle in Geneva. Instead of preaching in France himself, Calvin ended up establishing a school that trained preachers. 

Instead of planting protestant churches in France himself, Calvin sent hundreds of missionaries into France who established a whole network of churches. Sometimes our best laid plans seem to end in failure, but we should never be discouraged. 

TRUTHS FOR US

In the Bible book of Proverbs it says, 

“A man’s heart plans his way but the Lord directs his steps.”  (Proverbs 16:9)

This was true in the case of Frank Bottrill and in the case of John Calvin, and it is also true for us. 

Often in life we will make plans and dream dreams that sometimes seem to fall apart in a heap of ruins. Even our best laid plans can sometimes buckle under the weight of unforeseen circumstances and bad timing, but if we belong to Jesus we can be sure that even the most disastrous circumstances can still work out for our good, and the blessing of others. 

The Bible tells us in Romans 8:28, 

“And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose”. 

When we give our lives to God, we can be sure that he can take our best laid plans and turn them into something better. 

What set both Frank Bottrill and John Calvin apart was their faith. Instead of allowing their setbacks and failures to crush them they continued down the path that God had opened for them, fully trusting that He would accomplish His purpose for their lives.

Ultimately, what defines us is not how well we accomplish our best laid plans, but how well we adapt when those plans are derailed. Proverbs 3:5-6 says, 

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, in all your ways acknowledge him and he will direct your paths” 

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Dear Heavenly Father. We thank you for the care and protection you give us every day. And we especially want to thank you for the way you can take our lives and direct our paths, so that they are better than we could ever have expected. We want to make the choice to be guided by you and led by Your Spirit.  Please direct us in all that we do. We ask this in Jesus’ name.  Amen.