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.