Broken Hill Town Square, NSW

The former Town Square lacked many of features that are valued in modern community spaces, such as disability access and parking, safe pedestrian pathways and abundant and varied plants and trees. 

While the town square had served its purpose for many years, council wanted to revitalise the space to serve as an inviting meeting place and attractive entry point to the main street for tourists arriving by train, while also upgrading the space to meet disability access requirements. 

Working with Jenson PLUS and Broken Hill City Council, Tonkin provided civil, traffic and structural engineering services. This included desktop and field investigations, attendance at workshops and meetings with the community, inputs into conceptual designs, then ultimately detailed designs to enable construction.

The project had its challenges, including a number of unknown stormwater pipes that clashed with proposed footings for retaining walls, and budget constraints. Despite this, Tonkin worked collaboratively with Council, Jenson Plus, and the contractor to quickly resolve issues as they arose to keep the project moving during construction.

During early discussions and conceptual developments, Council originally intended to fill in the town square to allow an all-level space. However, through desktop investigations, and collaboration with Council staff it was realised that the existing town square was acting informally as a stormwater detention basin. Through Tonkin’s high-level assessment, it was recommended to retain the town square at the existing level to avoid any downstream impacts on stormwater flooding. Tonkin worked closely with Jenson Plus to develop a solution that softened the entry into the space while retaining a stormwater function.

The redeveloped town square was officially opened with a community celebration in March 2025.

The new space features new disability access ramps, seating, landscaping, dining areas and shade sails with misters. The upgrade has successfully revitalised the space, providing improved visual amenity and functionality to the town’s primary public realm area.

Read Broken Hill City Council's news release about the opening of the upgraded town square.