The Broken Hill Proprietary Company Ltd or BHP was floated, that is to say, shares in the company were offered for public sale. Over the next hundred and thirty-five years it was to become one of the world’s biggest mining companies. As a consequence of...
Charles Rasp, a former German officer who deserted from the Franco-Prussian war and then worked as a boundary rider on a sheep station in western New South Wales, discovered silver and lead in an area known as Broken Hill. Certain that he had made a rich find, he...
The Billiton company was established and acquired the right to mine on Billiton and Bangka Islands. Billiton continued to mine at Bangka island until 1958. Tin mining is a lucrative but destructive trade that has scarred the island’s landscape, bulldozed its...
Dutch explorers discovered tin at Billiton Island (Belitung) in what was then the Dutch East Indies which had been claimed for the Dutch by the government-backed military-commercial enterprise, the Dutch East India Company, even bigger than the British East India...
