Mining Towns: Making a Living, Making a Life

At any given moment in our history Australia has been in the middle of a mining boom. This timely book is a history of the iconic Australian towns that arose with these booms over a century: Broken Hill, Mount Isa, Queenstown, Mount Morgan, Port Pirie and Kambalda. Mining Towns shows the rich cultural and historical legacy these towns helped create as townspeople - those working below the ground and those above - sought to make their lives in them. The current ’fly-in-fly-out’ mining culture means we may not see the likes of them again, which, as this book shows, will be a great loss.

Erik Eklund is a professor of history at the Gippsland Campus of Monash University and the author of ＂Steel Town: The Making and Breaking of Port Kembla.＂ He is also the recipient of the New South Wales Premier’s History Prize.