Free Republic

In 2018, the city council of Broken Hill in New South Wales, Australia, had hoped to become the country’s first carbon-free city by 2030. About $415 million USD was invested in solar, wind and battery projects within 15 miles of the town of 19,000. These generators were supposed to supply enough electricity to power 117,000 homes. Then in October, a storm hit the region, destroying power lines connecting the town to dispatchable power from the New South Wales grid, and the entire town was plunged into rolling blackouts. While things gradually returned to normal over a few weeks, the region...

Griffith University scientists have led an international team to date the skull of an early human found in Africa, potentially upending human evolution knowledge with their discovery. The Broken Hill (Kabwe 1) skull is one of the best-preserved fossils of the early human species Homo heidelbergensis and was estimated to be about 500,000 years old... Discovered in 1921 by miners in Zambia, the Broken Hill remains have been difficult to date due to their haphazard recovery and the site being completely destroyed by quarrying. Using radiometric dating methods, Professor Grün’s analyses now puts the skull at a relatively young date,...

Rifles and flag used in the Picnic Train Attack by Muslims in Broken Hill Australia, 1 January, 1915 One of the lesser known, but informative actions of the First World War, was an attack, by Muslims, on a picnic train of unarmed civilians in Australia. The attack killed four civilians. A quick response by police, soldiers and civilians killed the two attackers after they took up a defensive position on a nearby hill top at Broken Hill, in New South Wales. At the start of the First World War, the Ottoman Empire had not chosen sides. Blunders by the...

Battle of Broken Hill The Department of Veteran’s Affairs announced last March that the centenary of the Battle of Broken Hill on 1 January 2015 would not be formally commemorated by the Australian Government. That decision will now be seen in hindsight by many as a wise one indeed—following the fallout resulting from the horrific Martin Place siege perpetrated by self-styled Islamic cleric Man Haron Monis just two weeks ago - that claimed his life and those of two innocent civilians. However Nicholas Shakespeare has written a novella—”Oddfellows” - based on this little known event—to be published by Random House...

There is every reason to be extremely worried about a survey in Australia last week indicating that nearly half the population believes that Muslims and people from the Middle East do not belong in the country. Many may not find a growing Islamophobia in Australia all that strange. After all, Australia is one of the few countries that has backed President George Bush’s policies on Iraq; it was where mosques were attacked in the aftermath of Sept. 11, and the government has pursued a persistently hard-line policy against asylum seekers, invariably Muslims. Nor can anyone forget the notorious Pauline Hanson,...