A mining town in its infancy is always a tantalising and seductive idea. The promise of riches that lay just below the surface, the feeling that all one must do is bend down and pick it up, and suddenly be set for life, would always draw people by the thousands to these small towns.

Broken Hill was of course no different in this regard, and it was also no different to crime growing just as rapidly as the population.

In 1888, the town’s first gaol was constructed. A simple building comprised of wood and iron, the Police Gaol as it was known, was a rushed answer to this growing spate of crime, and found itself crowded soon after the first prisoner entered on January 11, 1888.