Milparinka

Postcode: 2880

Milparinka is a small settlement in north west New South Wales, Australia located roughly 250 kilometres north of Broken Hill on the Silver City Highway with a population of ten.

In 1844 Charles Sturt's expediation was stranded for 6 months due to a lack of supplies nearby at Preservation Creek. Gold was discovered in the 1870s and the population peaked at 3000.

Milparinka became the first permanent settlement on the Albert Goldfields in the early 1880s, after gold was discovered at Mt Browne. It emerged on this sandstone hill, overlooking a waterhole on the Evelyn Creek. At that time Milparinka was a shanty town of several hundred people living in rough huts and tents. However, local sandstone was available for building purposes and more substantial buildings soon emerged. Consequently, it soon had its own newspaper, police office, chemist shop, two butchers, a courthouse (1886), a school (1883), a hospital (1889) and four hotels. The town's one remaining hotel, and the only one between Broken Hill and Tibooburra, is the Albert, first licensed in 1882. The old courthouse, police barracks and bank are nearby. The old post office is located in Loftus St.

Two other towns, Albert - which once had a population of 900 - and Mt Browne, existed briefly but only a few ruins remain today. A cemetery can also be found some distance from the Mt Browne diggings. The lack of water made gold prospecting extraordinarily difficult. Dry blowing was used and some miners even carted their gold bearing dirt to Milparinka where they washed it in the town's waterhole. The diggings were largely abandoned by 1893.

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