MEDIA: SILVER DREAMS

The Story of Broken Hill

ARTICLE IN PITTWATER LIFE JUNE 2008

After five self-published books on family, friends and knee surgery, writer Pam Bayfield has turned to fiction for her latest work Silver Dreams. Pam, who grew up in Broken Hill, has researched the settlement and early history of her home town, finding old locations and miners' early homes and talked to the families of pioneers.

She has spun the whole into an entertaining saga of the adventurous young men, their sweethearts and their children who settled the district, first in Silverton and later in Broken Hill. They endured incredible hardships in mines primitive by today's standards. Many lived poorly, first in tents then in simple homes they built themselves and the women in particular suffered with the dust, the heat, the rigors of childbirth and the tragedies of mine accidents and later of wartime. But there was great optimism and cheer, too, as they founded dynasties of proud survivors as the story moves from the early 1880's to the present day.