Moonta. Yorke Peninsula. Looking through an arched door in the Hughes Enginehouse at the Moonta Mines copper mine area. Hughes Enginehouse was built in 1865.
Moonta Mines and the Hughes Enginehouse.
After the May 1861 race between Hughes’ man William Horn and Patrick Ryan and his associates to register the Moonta mining lease a lengthy legal process began for the validation of Walter Watson Hughes’ mining rights to the site. Although the legal battle was not settled until 1864 Hughes acted quickly and formed the Tipara Mineral Association, later the Moonta Mining association, with himself, Edward Stirling, John Taylor, Robert Barr Smith, (Sir)Thomas Elder, G Waterhouse and G. Hall. Hundreds of Cornish miners were attracted to the town directly from Cornwall although some came from Kapunda. The government resumed some parts of Hughes’ pastoral lease to lay out the towns of Kadina and the port of Wallaroo. Moonta was surveyed and town blocks sold in April 1863. As they sold quickly most Moonta settlers lived in cottages and shanties on the mining leasehold lands in settlements such as Hamley Flat, Moonta Mines, Yelta, Cross Roads etc. By 1870 the population of Moonta reached 10,000 people with 6,000 on the mining lease lands. Coal was shipped in to the Moonta mines from Newcastle as it was needed to fire the boiler houses and the water pumps for the mine. The copper lodes were up to 700 metres below the surface although most worked lodes were less than 300 metres below the surface and the main lodes were named Elder’s lode, Elder West lode, Beddomes lode, Greens lode and Fergusson lode. Each lode had one or more deep shafts with the main ones being Washington’s shaft, Stirling’s shaft, Taylor’s shaft and Hughes’ shaft etc. There were a number of enginehouses across Moonta mines Hughes’s, Richman’s and Elder’s. Hughes enginehouse had Smith’s (Robert Barr Smith), Hughes, Elders, Duncan and Bennetts shafts nearby. Next to the enginehouse was the boilerhouse which created steam for the enginehouse which pumped water out of the deep shafts. Nearby was a winching house to winch items and miners down the shafts but mainly to bring ore to the surface. Nearby were the settling tanks for water pumped from the shafts, the concentration plant and the crushing plant. These processes and structures were needed near most mine shafts. Also near Hughes enginehouse were the stables and the workshops for the repair and in some cases manufacture of equipment etc. 300 men and boys were employed in Hughes workshops alone.
The Hughes’ engine house serviced Smith’s, Waterhouse’s and Elder’s shafts and others and it was primarily responsible to pumping water out of mine shafts. Hughe’s 60 inch Cornish beam pumping engine was installed in a fine stone building in 1865 and it operated continuously without any major break down from then until the mine closure in 1923. It required constant works to keep fire up to the boilers. It could pump water from a depth of 700 metres (2,500 feet) with four strokes of the pump a minute. Near this main shaft were workshops, the mine offices, the manager’s residence (Captain Hancock) etc. In other areas of the mine works were the brick kiln, the assay office, the powder magazine, processing plants and several major areas for the tailings debris bought to the surface from the mine shafts. The Hughes enginehouse was built of limestone and still remains but without the pump. Near it are the ruins of Elder’s enginehouse and the Hughes water pool or reservoir. Captain Hancock managed the Hughes’ mines from 1864 to 1898. Under his management the mine grew quickly with 1,200 men and boys employed as early as 1865.
Across the main road are the remains of Richman’s enginehouse, Richman’s Tailings Heap which can be climbed, the compressor house and the crushing plant etc. Richman’s enginehouse which was built from 1867 to 1869 was mainly used to power the crushing and dressing machinery of Taylor’s Shaft the deepest shaft on the Moonta fields. Taylor’s shaft which descended 2,520 feet beneath the surface had its water pumped out by the Hughes enginehouse from some distance away. The ruins of the crushing and concentrating plants beside Taylor’s shaft are quite impressive. Some of the ruins of the crusher house erected in 1869 in local stone remain beside Richman’s enginehouse. All mining required explosives, mainly gun powder and later dynamite and the ruins of the Moonta Mines explosives magazine still exist near the old Moonta Mines School.
In 1890 the Wallaroo and Moonta Mines amalgamated. The combined companies employed on average around 1,900 people a year in the mines and smelters. The peak year for employment was 1906 when the company hired 2,700 men. This followed a disastrous fire in 1904 when the large Taylor Shaft and poppet was destroyed by fire. There were three main shafts operating at the Wallaroo Mines by 1906, the Boors, Hughes and Office shafts. Between 1860 and 1923 when the mine finally closed down the Wallaroo Mine alone produced almost £10,000 million worth of copper and the combined mine with Moonta produced over £20,000 million worth of copper. After the closure of the mine buildings were stripped of anything saleable and most were demolished. As the population dwindled the cottages on the mining lease land were generally demolished but a few still remain. At Moonta Mines a few non-mining buildings remain the government school (1877-1968) now the National Trust Museum, Moonta Mines Methodist Church (1865) with a seating capacity of 1,250 parishioners and a typical miner’s cottage (1870) now a National Trust museum. At East Moonta there is a former Methodist Church built in 1872.
Sir Walter Watson Hughes.
Walter Watson Hughes was born in 1803 in Scotland in Pittenweem near St Andrews in Fife. In his early teens he went to sea and eventually bought his own ship the brig Hero in Calcutta in 1829 when he was 26 years old. He then traded in Asia including the opium trade from Calcutta to China. He established close bonds with his group of sailors on the Hero. He settled in Adelaide in 1841 and married Sophia Richmond later that year and assisted his crew from the Hero to return to England, gather their families and emigrate to SA. Whilst working for a mercantile company he began sheep farming in the Adelaide Hills and amassed some money and a flock of sheep. The workers on his Macclesfield property were all the former sailors of the Hero. In 1843 he also took out a leasehold run of 16 square miles near Wilmington with a flock of 6,000 sheep. In 1846 he took out leasehold lands by the Hummock Ranges and across to the Broughton Plains. In April 1846 he acquired a new leasehold at Hoyleton along the edge of the Clare Hills called The Peak west of Skillogalee Creek. In 1851 he also took out a small mining lease on Yorke Peninsula as he had been running sheep there with his brother-in-law John Duncan. In 1857 he took over the Wallaroo run there from Robert Miller adjoining the Point Riley run held by Edward Stirling. He then organised a great trek of his flock, his workers and their families from Macclesfield to Wallaroo. He instructed his shepherds to look for minerals. Wallaroo was managed by John Duncan as Hughes mainly resided at The Peak. One shepherd John Boor discovered copper at Wallaroo in 1860. Hughes took out mining leases but others soon rushed to the area and also took out mining leases, especially in the area that became Kadina. Hughes became the largest shareholder in his Wallaroo Mining Company which was originally known as Wandilta Mines. In June 1860 the first ship load of copper ore was taken to Port Adelaide at a cost of 8 shillings a ton. By comparison transport of ore from Burra cost 50 shillings per ton at that time. The Wallaroo ores were 20 to 30 % pure copper but some ore were up to 50% pure copper. Bricks and mining equipment was unloaded at Wallaroo for Hughes in September 1860 and over 20 men were working his mines. In August 1860 Hughes visited Burra to entice Cornish miners to Wallaroo. By November 1860 the mine was being worked in conjunction with Elders Stirling and Company (Thomas Elder, Robert Barr Smith, John Taylor and Edward Stirling). Hughes’ early start was not popular with other mining lease holders. Then to further sully Walter Watson Hughes’s reputation another shepherd Patrick Ryan in May 1861 found copper on Hughes leasehold run at what was to become Moonta. This was the mine that produced great wealth and saved and made the fortunes of Hughes and Elder Smith and Co as many believed the Wallaroo mine alone would have bankrupted them all.
Ryan tried to register his mining claim but was too drunk to remember where it was. Hughes then used skulduggery and cunning and registered four mining leases on the next day after Ryan had tried to register one. Some of Ryan’s partners were ready to register the claim the next day but they were “pipped at the post”. When Hughes heard of Ryan’s unsuccessful claim he sent one of his men on horseback overnight to get to the Surveyor General’s Office first before Ryan’s partners. Hughes also had Ryan sign an agreement with him. Hughes also registered a further 26 buffer zone mining rights as well. Some later claimed Hughes had no moral or legal right to these Moonta mining rights but after years of court appeals and legal fighting the Privy Council in England ruled in favour of Hughes. During the legal fight Hughes returned to live in England from 1864 to 1870.
The establishment of the Moonta Mine was life changing for all the five major investors. It was the first mine to return a profit of one million pounds. Once it was operational Hughes bought Torrens Park House, built a grand mansion to replace his simple stone cottage on Hughes Park at Watervale, sailed back to England for a few years, took up leased lands near Lake Eyre and acquired large freehold estates at Watervale and Gum Creek. In Wallaroo he built the first copper smelter in 1861 followed by other furnaces as the Moonta mines grew. Mining operations at Moonta were complex and some shafts exceeded 700 metres in depth. This created problems with water (and heat for the miners) so large pump houses were required such as the Hughes Engine House which still stands, albeit in ruins. The Moonta mine lasted for over sixty years. The Copper Triangle became the largest population centre outside of Adelaide by the 1870s. In the first year of operations the Moonta Mine produced over £100,000 profit. But it had another sixty years of operations after that!
Was Walter Watson Hughes the father of 19th century Aboriginal leader John Sansbury? Walter Watson Hughes worked on leaseholds on Yorke Peninsula from the mid-1840s. He also took out leasehold runs in 1851 at Hoyleton and then Wallaroo in 1857. He never built a substantial homestead on his Wallaroo run which was run by his brother-in-law John Duncan as he lived at The Peak. According to Narrunga oral genealogy John Sansbury who was born in 1854 to “King Tommy” and “Queen Mary” leader of all the clans on Yorke Peninsula was actually the biological son of Walter Watson Hughes. This was never acknowledged by Hughes or ever reported in the white press. When John Sansbury married in a church in 1874 he only listed his father as King Tommy. Presumably this church was at Point Pearce Aboriginal Mission which was established in 1868. A group of nondenominational missionaries led by the Moravians had started mission work with the Aborigines near the copper mines of Moonta in 1867. But Walter Watson Hughes gave a pension for life to King Tommy supposedly as compensation for his lands and King Tommy’s help in the discovery of copper. Or was it a pension to assist in the upbringing of his biological son? We will never know the full truth of this but photographs of John Sansbury in the 1870s certainly show a remarkable resemblance to Walter Watson Hughes. The Hughes name was also taken up by other Narrung people which was very common in the 19th century when Aboriginal people adopted the name of any white person that they worked for. We do know that Walter Watson Hughes and his wife Sophia never had any children of their own. Consequently when he died Hughes left his South Australian freehold lands – Hughes Park at Watervale and Gum Creek station near Booborowie and parts of his fortune to his nephew in South Australia – Sir John Duncan the son of Hughes’ sister who was married to John Duncan. Sir Walter Watson Hughes was buried near his London home in Chertsey, Surrey as was his wife Sophia who died in 1885. Hughes died on New Year’s Day 1887. He was knighted in 1880 for his services and philanthropy to South Australia. Apart from the University he was a substantial donor to the Presbyterian Church which was in Flinders Street. His memorial window in that church donated by his nephew John Duncan was moved to Scots Church North Terrace after the Flinders Street Church was sold to the YMCA in 1956. In 1860 he also donated copper ore specimens to the Gawler museum. When Walter Watson Hughes and Sophia Hughes returned to England in 1874 they both had their portraits painted in London by Miss Margaret Thomas.
Moonta. Yorke Peninsula. Looking through an arched door in the Hughes Enginehouse at the Moonta Mines copper mine area. Hughes Enginehouse was built in 1865.
Moonta Mines and the Hughes Enginehouse.
After the May 1861 race between Hughes’ man William Horn and Patrick Ryan and his associates to register the Moonta mining lease a lengthy legal process began for the validation of Walter Watson Hughes’ mining rights to the site. Although the legal battle was not settled until 1864 Hughes acted quickly and formed the Tipara Mineral Association, later the Moonta Mining association, with himself, Edward Stirling, John Taylor, Robert Barr Smith, (Sir)Thomas Elder, G Waterhouse and G. Hall. Hundreds of Cornish miners were attracted to the town directly from Cornwall although some came from Kapunda. The government resumed some parts of Hughes’ pastoral lease to lay out the towns of Kadina and the port of Wallaroo. Moonta was surveyed and town blocks sold in April 1863. As they sold quickly most Moonta settlers lived in cottages and shanties on the mining leasehold lands in settlements such as Hamley Flat, Moonta Mines, Yelta, Cross Roads etc. By 1870 the population of Moonta reached 10,000 people with 6,000 on the mining lease lands. Coal was shipped in to the Moonta mines from Newcastle as it was needed to fire the boiler houses and the water pumps for the mine. The copper lodes were up to 700 metres below the surface although most worked lodes were less than 300 metres below the surface and the main lodes were named Elder’s lode, Elder West lode, Beddomes lode, Greens lode and Fergusson lode. Each lode had one or more deep shafts with the main ones being Washington’s shaft, Stirling’s shaft, Taylor’s shaft and Hughes’ shaft etc. There were a number of enginehouses across Moonta mines Hughes’s, Richman’s and Elder’s. Hughes enginehouse had Smith’s (Robert Barr Smith), Hughes, Elders, Duncan and Bennetts shafts nearby. Next to the enginehouse was the boilerhouse which created steam for the enginehouse which pumped water out of the deep shafts. Nearby was a winching house to winch items and miners down the shafts but mainly to bring ore to the surface. Nearby were the settling tanks for water pumped from the shafts, the concentration plant and the crushing plant. These processes and structures were needed near most mine shafts. Also near Hughes enginehouse were the stables and the workshops for the repair and in some cases manufacture of equipment etc. 300 men and boys were employed in Hughes workshops alone.
The Hughes’ engine house serviced Smith’s, Waterhouse’s and Elder’s shafts and others and it was primarily responsible to pumping water out of mine shafts. Hughe’s 60 inch Cornish beam pumping engine was installed in a fine stone building in 1865 and it operated continuously without any major break down from then until the mine closure in 1923. It required constant works to keep fire up to the boilers. It could pump water from a depth of 700 metres (2,500 feet) with four strokes of the pump a minute. Near this main shaft were workshops, the mine offices, the manager’s residence (Captain Hancock) etc. In other areas of the mine works were the brick kiln, the assay office, the powder magazine, processing plants and several major areas for the tailings debris bought to the surface from the mine shafts. The Hughes enginehouse was built of limestone and still remains but without the pump. Near it are the ruins of Elder’s enginehouse and the Hughes water pool or reservoir. Captain Hancock managed the Hughes’ mines from 1864 to 1898. Under his management the mine grew quickly with 1,200 men and boys employed as early as 1865.
Across the main road are the remains of Richman’s enginehouse, Richman’s Tailings Heap which can be climbed, the compressor house and the crushing plant etc. Richman’s enginehouse which was built from 1867 to 1869 was mainly used to power the crushing and dressing machinery of Taylor’s Shaft the deepest shaft on the Moonta fields. Taylor’s shaft which descended 2,520 feet beneath the surface had its water pumped out by the Hughes enginehouse from some distance away. The ruins of the crushing and concentrating plants beside Taylor’s shaft are quite impressive. Some of the ruins of the crusher house erected in 1869 in local stone remain beside Richman’s enginehouse. All mining required explosives, mainly gun powder and later dynamite and the ruins of the Moonta Mines explosives magazine still exist near the old Moonta Mines School.
In 1890 the Wallaroo and Moonta Mines amalgamated. The combined companies employed on average around 1,900 people a year in the mines and smelters. The peak year for employment was 1906 when the company hired 2,700 men. This followed a disastrous fire in 1904 when the large Taylor Shaft and poppet was destroyed by fire. There were three main shafts operating at the Wallaroo Mines by 1906, the Boors, Hughes and Office shafts. Between 1860 and 1923 when the mine finally closed down the Wallaroo Mine alone produced almost £10,000 million worth of copper and the combined mine with Moonta produced over £20,000 million worth of copper. After the closure of the mine buildings were stripped of anything saleable and most were demolished. As the population dwindled the cottages on the mining lease land were generally demolished but a few still remain. At Moonta Mines a few non-mining buildings remain the government school (1877-1968) now the National Trust Museum, Moonta Mines Methodist Church (1865) with a seating capacity of 1,250 parishioners and a typical miner’s cottage (1870) now a National Trust museum. At East Moonta there is a former Methodist Church built in 1872.
Sir Walter Watson Hughes.
Walter Watson Hughes was born in 1803 in Scotland in Pittenweem near St Andrews in Fife. In his early teens he went to sea and eventually bought his own ship the brig Hero in Calcutta in 1829 when he was 26 years old. He then traded in Asia including the opium trade from Calcutta to China. He established close bonds with his group of sailors on the Hero. He settled in Adelaide in 1841 and married Sophia Richmond later that year and assisted his crew from the Hero to return to England, gather their families and emigrate to SA. Whilst working for a mercantile company he began sheep farming in the Adelaide Hills and amassed some money and a flock of sheep. The workers on his Macclesfield property were all the former sailors of the Hero. In 1843 he also took out a leasehold run of 16 square miles near Wilmington with a flock of 6,000 sheep. In 1846 he took out leasehold lands by the Hummock Ranges and across to the Broughton Plains. In April 1846 he acquired a new leasehold at Hoyleton along the edge of the Clare Hills called The Peak west of Skillogalee Creek. In 1851 he also took out a small mining lease on Yorke Peninsula as he had been running sheep there with his brother-in-law John Duncan. In 1857 he took over the Wallaroo run there from Robert Miller adjoining the Point Riley run held by Edward Stirling. He then organised a great trek of his flock, his workers and their families from Macclesfield to Wallaroo. He instructed his shepherds to look for minerals. Wallaroo was managed by John Duncan as Hughes mainly resided at The Peak. One shepherd John Boor discovered copper at Wallaroo in 1860. Hughes took out mining leases but others soon rushed to the area and also took out mining leases, especially in the area that became Kadina. Hughes became the largest shareholder in his Wallaroo Mining Company which was originally known as Wandilta Mines. In June 1860 the first ship load of copper ore was taken to Port Adelaide at a cost of 8 shillings a ton. By comparison transport of ore from Burra cost 50 shillings per ton at that time. The Wallaroo ores were 20 to 30 % pure copper but some ore were up to 50% pure copper. Bricks and mining equipment was unloaded at Wallaroo for Hughes in September 1860 and over 20 men were working his mines. In August 1860 Hughes visited Burra to entice Cornish miners to Wallaroo. By November 1860 the mine was being worked in conjunction with Elders Stirling and Company (Thomas Elder, Robert Barr Smith, John Taylor and Edward Stirling). Hughes’ early start was not popular with other mining lease holders. Then to further sully Walter Watson Hughes’s reputation another shepherd Patrick Ryan in May 1861 found copper on Hughes leasehold run at what was to become Moonta. This was the mine that produced great wealth and saved and made the fortunes of Hughes and Elder Smith and Co as many believed the Wallaroo mine alone would have bankrupted them all.
Ryan tried to register his mining claim but was too drunk to remember where it was. Hughes then used skulduggery and cunning and registered four mining leases on the next day after Ryan had tried to register one. Some of Ryan’s partners were ready to register the claim the next day but they were “pipped at the post”. When Hughes heard of Ryan’s unsuccessful claim he sent one of his men on horseback overnight to get to the Surveyor General’s Office first before Ryan’s partners. Hughes also had Ryan sign an agreement with him. Hughes also registered a further 26 buffer zone mining rights as well. Some later claimed Hughes had no moral or legal right to these Moonta mining rights but after years of court appeals and legal fighting the Privy Council in England ruled in favour of Hughes. During the legal fight Hughes returned to live in England from 1864 to 1870.
The establishment of the Moonta Mine was life changing for all the five major investors. It was the first mine to return a profit of one million pounds. Once it was operational Hughes bought Torrens Park House, built a grand mansion to replace his simple stone cottage on Hughes Park at Watervale, sailed back to England for a few years, took up leased lands near Lake Eyre and acquired large freehold estates at Watervale and Gum Creek. In Wallaroo he built the first copper smelter in 1861 followed by other furnaces as the Moonta mines grew. Mining operations at Moonta were complex and some shafts exceeded 700 metres in depth. This created problems with water (and heat for the miners) so large pump houses were required such as the Hughes Engine House which still stands, albeit in ruins. The Moonta mine lasted for over sixty years. The Copper Triangle became the largest population centre outside of Adelaide by the 1870s. In the first year of operations the Moonta Mine produced over £100,000 profit. But it had another sixty years of operations after that!
Was Walter Watson Hughes the father of 19th century Aboriginal leader John Sansbury? Walter Watson Hughes worked on leaseholds on Yorke Peninsula from the mid-1840s. He also took out leasehold runs in 1851 at Hoyleton and then Wallaroo in 1857. He never built a substantial homestead on his Wallaroo run which was run by his brother-in-law John Duncan as he lived at The Peak. According to Narrunga oral genealogy John Sansbury who was born in 1854 to “King Tommy” and “Queen Mary” leader of all the clans on Yorke Peninsula was actually the biological son of Walter Watson Hughes. This was never acknowledged by Hughes or ever reported in the white press. When John Sansbury married in a church in 1874 he only listed his father as King Tommy. Presumably this church was at Point Pearce Aboriginal Mission which was established in 1868. A group of nondenominational missionaries led by the Moravians had started mission work with the Aborigines near the copper mines of Moonta in 1867. But Walter Watson Hughes gave a pension for life to King Tommy supposedly as compensation for his lands and King Tommy’s help in the discovery of copper. Or was it a pension to assist in the upbringing of his biological son? We will never know the full truth of this but photographs of John Sansbury in the 1870s certainly show a remarkable resemblance to Walter Watson Hughes. The Hughes name was also taken up by other Narrung people which was very common in the 19th century when Aboriginal people adopted the name of any white person that they worked for. We do know that Walter Watson Hughes and his wife Sophia never had any children of their own. Consequently when he died Hughes left his South Australian freehold lands – Hughes Park at Watervale and Gum Creek station near Booborowie and parts of his fortune to his nephew in South Australia – Sir John Duncan the son of Hughes’ sister who was married to John Duncan. Sir Walter Watson Hughes was buried near his London home in Chertsey, Surrey as was his wife Sophia who died in 1885. Hughes died on New Year’s Day 1887. He was knighted in 1880 for his services and philanthropy to South Australia. Apart from the University he was a substantial donor to the Presbyterian Church which was in Flinders Street. His memorial window in that church donated by his nephew John Duncan was moved to Scots Church North Terrace after the Flinders Street Church was sold to the YMCA in 1956. In 1860 he also donated copper ore specimens to the Gawler museum. When Walter Watson Hughes and Sophia Hughes returned to England in 1874 they both had their portraits painted in London by Miss Margaret Thomas.