View allAll Photos Tagged smelts
Broken Hill Mine and town. The Barrier Ranges were discovered by Captain Charles Sturt in 1844 but it was not until 1876 that silver was discovered at Thackaringa near Silverton by Paddy Green the storekeeper of Menindee. Sturt had taken samples of mineral rocks back to the SA governor in 1844 but they were lost! The silver rush at Thackaringa not begin until 1880. At that time the NSW government sent a police officer and magistrate to Silverton. In 1883 Silverton was surveyed as a town and its own silver rush began. A year later it had a population of 1,745 with 3,000 near the town. There were dozens of silver mines and mining companies within thirty miles of Silverton. Then in September 1883 Charles Rasp an employee of the Mount Gipps sheep station saw a part of the ranges that looked promising for minerals so with other employees James Poole and David James he pegged off the Broken Hill mining lease as it looked like almost pure tin. Once aware of this mining claim George McCulloch, the leaseholder of Mount Gipps, held a meeting of all his station men. The seven men formed a syndicate pegging 7 more mining leases in the ranges covering all that is now Broken Hill. The syndicate was: Rasp boundary rider, McCulloch station leaseholder, George Urquhart sheep overseer, George Lind station bookkeeper, Philip Charley station hand, David James contractor and James Poole offsider of James. Within a year others took out the North Broken Hill blocks and others the South blocks. Early returns were poor and the lodes not rich but all lodes showed both silver and lead. By the end of 1884 chloride ores of lead and galena ores of silver and lead and some zinc were being mined. The first smelters were built at the mine. The Broken Hill Proprietary Company was floated in August 1885. Only four of the original group of seven in the Broken Hill Mining Company were in the new BHP Company. The shares that were sold from the old syndicate for around £110 were worth one million pounds six years later! The new company offered 1,600 shares at £20 each in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne. New shafts showed the lode went down almost vertically and was over 20 feet thick in places. The head office of BHP was located in Melbourne and the town of Broken Hill emerged around the BHP mines. Within days of the share release some shares were foolishly being sold for £13 a share. But in the first two months of operation the big mine produced over £44,000 worth of silver and lead. The first share dividend was given out three months after the company was formed! The first Broken Hill Post Office opened in 1885 as Silverton town and mines declined. The BHP mine shafts were over 200 feet by January 1886. By April BHP shares were worth £47 each. The BHP smelters opened in May 1886. In the next four months £67,000 worth of ore was obtained. By the end of 1886 shareholders had received over £4 for their initial share price of £20. The completion of the Peterborough to Silverton to Broken Hill railway set up BHP for more production in 1887. Original shareholders were going to be wealthy for at least the next 100 years or more. But the BHP mine was not the only mine- the other main ones were the South, Central, British, Block 14 and Block 10 mines. In 1888 BHP £20 shares reached £417 and their mine produced over £900,000 worth of ores including tin. In 1888 BHP was paying a regular dividend of £2 per share. In its first six years to 1891 BHP paid out £3,320,000 in dividends and produced over £7,000,000 worth of minerals. In its first four years BHP spent £175,000 on land, buildings, its smelters and machinery. By 1906 BHP had paid nearly £12,000,000 in dividends. By 1908 BHP employed 4,850 men and they were just one of several major companies in Broken Hill. BHP miners received a minimum of 10 shillings per eight hour shift in 1908. Three shower and bath rooms able to accommodate 500 men each were provided for those ending a shift. A major decision made by BHP in its early years was to end its smelting in Broken Hill in 1892 as there was not enough water there. Instead BHP developed their smelters at Port Pirie and railed the ores to that city from 1890 onwards. The British Broken Hill Company had established a smelter at Port Pirie in 1889 and BHP took this over and enlarged it. Eventually the smelters at Port Pirie smelted for five major Broken Hill mining companies. SA salt was required for the smelting of zinc in the Pirie smelters.
By the end of 1888 Broken Hill was the third biggest city in NSW after Sydney and Newcastle. It had a population of over 10,000 people by the beginning of 1889 but in April 1886 there had been only 34 inhabitants! The first building there was the mine manager’s house for the Day Dream mine in 1885. The town was surveyed in April 1886. The first church as the Wesleyan Methodist church built in 1885. The Customs House was an important early structure levying goods from South Australia but mainly collecting revenue from ores produced. The first hotel, the Bonanza was licensed October 1885. More followed. Hotels, houses and hovels had been built all over Broken Hill by the end of 1888 and in 1908 there were 61 hotels in Broken Hill. The town was declared a municipality in 1888. By 1890 many stone shops and offices in Argent Street had been completed and the town had a population of 26,000 by 1891. But progress had not been smooth. Strikes had closed mining operations for short periods, a major fire had destroyed wooden buildings in Argent Street in 1888, a water famine was experienced in 1892 and a bigger strike occurred in 1892 and in 1893 several banks had failed as depression and crisis hit all of Australia. The first of many serious mine accidents occurred in 1895 when nine men were killed and many wounded followed by another accident killing three men in 1897. But early in the 20th century the city was well endowed with churches, halls and government buildings. In 1905 there were wooden Anglican, Salvation Army, Baptist, Congregational and four wooden Methodist churches in the town. There were also three stone Methodist Churches, the stone Catholic Church (now the Cathedral), the stone Presbyterian Church in Lane Street and a stone Anglican Church in Railway Town. The Town Hall was built in 1891 as was the current Post Office. The Courthouse was finished in 1889 and the Police Station was built in 1890. The first Trades Hall was built in 1898.
Broken Hill in the 20th Century. By the early 20th century Broken Hill had 35,000 residents which was an all-time peak for the city. Some significant things occurred between 1900 and 1930. From 1902 to 1926 steam powered trams ran along Argent Street. Minor city centres developed in Railway Town and in South Broken Hill with shops, churches halls etc. An eastern railway reached the city in 1919 but it was only a spur line from Menindee with no other connections and a small timber station was built in Sulphide Street. The great western line from Sydney had reached Parkes in 1893. It was extended to Condobolin in 1898. It reached Menindee in 1927 thus completing a line from Broken Hill to Sydney. The world famous Silver City Comet train, the first air conditioned train in the British Empire, began service in 1937. It operated to and from Parkes connecting to a Sydney train. It ceased in 1989. When the service closed local residents protested and since 1993 they have had a once a week Outback Explorer train from Parkes to Broken Hill connecting to Sydney. In 1970 the new standard gauge line from Sydney to Perth opened & the Indian Pacific now calls into Broken Hill twice a week on its transcontinental services.
With a half dozen mining companies dominating the city and with the mining industry being heavily unionised Broken Hill has had a number of significant strikes and lock outs by the mine owners. In the 1880s miners went on strike to ensure only unionised miners were employed. Later all workers in the city had to be in unions or black listing was applied even to shopkeepers and small businesses. One of the worst mining strikes was in 1909 when miners were locked out for five months if they did not accept BHP’s offer a reduction of 12.5% of their wages. Scab works were ostracised sometimes violently. The strike put considerable stress on miners, their families and businesses in the town. This was followed by the worst strike in 1919/1920 when miners struck for 18 months. Earlier strikes during WWI tried to reduce the 48 hour week to a 40 hour week and to improve conditions. But between 1910 and 1919 a total of 141 miners and been killed at work; temperatures deep in shafts were often around 110 degrees Fahrenheit and wages were static. As metal prices worldwide dropped the mining companies tried to reduce wages. The workers wanted a wage increase, better safety and a 30 hour working week and compensation for industrial diseases and injuries. Thus the strike began. Cooperative depots were established by the unions to provide bread, butter, potatoes and onions to the families. In 1920 when metal prices began to rise again the mining companies were more prepared to negotiate. The companies accepted a 40 hour week for miners and 44 hours work for surface workers and miners suffering from tuberculosis or lead poisoning were to be compensated. Finally a ruling by the NSW Industrial Commission settled the dispute. During the strikes the unions bands and musicians would lead hundreds of picketers to the mine gates. The dissatisfaction with wages and conditions fostered some radicalism with Communists and other radicals joining the ranks of the miners. In 1923 all the town’s unions united in the Barrier Industrial Council led by Paddy O’Neill until 1948.
One of the most radical men to lead the miners was NSW Member of Parliament Percy Brookfield. He began as a Labor MP in 1917 but left the party in 1919 as they were not radical enough. He was a strong supporter of the Industrial Workers of the World movement and the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. In 1920 he contested the Broken Hill seat as a member of the Industrial Socialist Labor party and won. His support of the Bolsheviks probably led to a mentally unstable Russian émigré Koorman Tomayeff attacking him on the Riverton Railway Station platform on 22 March 1921 at the refreshment rooms. When the gunman started firing at passengers a local policeman drew out his revolver but it jammed. Brookfield ran towards Tomayeff with the gun but he was shot and wounded. Brookfield wrestled Tomayeff to the ground saving other passengers from gun fire. Brookfield died the next day of his wounds and over 40 shots were fired by Tomayeff. Several other passengers were wounded and one died. Tomayeff was not tried but certified insane and died in 1948 in a mental hospital in Adelaide. This was the first political assassination in Australia. Brookfield was buried in Broken Hill cemetery with a large publicly funded memorial obelisk.
Broken Hill was the site of the first and only WWI attack on Australian soil on New Year’s Day 1915. But was it also a Muslim terrorist attack and not just a war attack? The Manchester Unity lodge was holding its annual New Year’s Day picnic and a loaded train with 1,200 men, women and children all in open ore trucks was leaving the town for a picnic site along the Silverton Tram railway. The open desert scrub meant the passengers were sitting ducks. Not far out of town two “Afghans”, probably from the Kyber Pass area of India (now Pakistan) opened fire on the train as part of jihad called for by the leader of the Ottoman Empire, Sultan Mehmed V and religious leader Shakyha-al-Islam as Turkey was at war with Britain and France from 5th November 1914.The jihad was issued on 14th November 1914. Gool Mohamed and Mulla Abdulla fired 20 to 30 shots. Eleven people were hit - four died with two shot on the train and two more nearby and seven were wounded. People tried to jump off the train to escape the slaughter. The two attackers headed to some rocky outcrops at White’s Reserve about a mile away. Police and militia gathered and headed there for a show down at what was sensationally entitled the “Battle of Broken Hill“ in a 1981 film. After an hour and a half of shooting the rocky hideout were stormed. Mulla Abdulla was dead and Gool Mohamed had 16 wounds and died shortly afterwards on his way to Broken Hill hospital. The two attackers were quickly buried. Their former residence in the Camel Camp was burned to the ground as was the German Club in the city as residents believed the Germans had urged the cameleers to attack. Germany and Turkey were allies. The newspapers referred to the two as Turks as they were fighting for Turkey. In Adelaide a Muslin flag was torn down from the Little Gilbert Street Mosque. Gool Mohamed supposedly left a note in Urdu at the rocky outcrop saying he was fighting for Turkey. The rifles, Koran and Turkish flag which the two used are now in the Police and Justice Museum of Sydney. At the site of the attack an ore train carriage marks the spot and a replica of an ice cream cart is nearby. Gool Mohamed was born in Pakistan and came to the outback as a cameleer. Around 1900 he travelled to Turkey to fight in the Turkish army. He returned to Broken Hill and sold ice cream from a cart. He had worked in the mines for some time so he had to be a unionist at that time. Mulla Abdulla was the Iman and the halal butcher for the Camel Camp residents and he had arrived in Broken Hill in 1898. Although their mosque was in the town the cameleers were not welcomed in the town as residents as they lived with their camels. Their houses were in a camp a couple of kilometres out of the city. Three days after the attack eleven suspect enemy aliens were removed from Broken Hill (six Austrians, four Germans and one Turk) and taken to the internment camp on Torrens Island in Adelaide. The Prime Minister Billy Hughes used the attack as motivation for the internment of enemy aliens during the WWI. Less than four months after the attack Australian troops were fighting the Turks at Anzac Cove.
Historical Walk in Broken Hill by Denis.
1. Corner of Argent and Chloride streets. Post Office. Red brick. Built 1891. Architect the Colonial Architect James Barnet. It is dominated by the square tower with the mansard roof which is on the corner with a veranda.
2. On the diagonal corner is Wendts Chambers with classical Greek triangular pediments along roof line and two projecting triangular pediment headed sections. It was built in 1892 by Wendts jewellers of Adelaide for they used Broken Hill silver in their work. They leased sections of the building including to the Commonwealth Bank from 1914.
3. Old Town Hall next to PO. Foundation stone 1890 laid by Sir Henry Parkes Premier of NSW. Opened 1891. Very ornate stone building with double veranda and projecting porch and balcony.
4. Opposite Town Hall is a fine granite commercial building the Pirie Building erected in 1891. In grey stone with classical style with symmetry – triangular pediments over end double rectangular windows and another over the double central rounded windows. The architects Withall and Wells also designed the Town hall opposite.
5. Next to Town Hall is old Police station. Red brick with arched veranda and built in 1890.Cell block at its rear.
6. Next door is the Art Deco/Federation style Technical College built in 1900 to 1901. Now a TAFE College. Two government architects including Walter Liberty Vernon. Note central air vent and wooden cupola so necessary in this climate with no air conditioning!
7. Next is the fine Courthouse. Architect was James Barnet the Colonial Architect. Built in 1889 in stuccoed brick. Triangular pediment in middle of façade contains the NSW state emblem. Double veranda posts add to this sense of stability and power.
8. Opposite the Courthouse are Carrington Chambers one of the oldest building in Broken Hill. Built in simple style in 1888 with Dutch gable style pediment and decorative corner stones above windows.
9. Soldiers’ War Memorial by Courthouse. The statue of a soldier with a grenade was unveiled in 1925.By C. Gilbert.
10. Across the corner with massive bulk & cast iron balcony lace work is the 3 storey Palace Hotel with unusual peaked roof structures on the two corners. Built primarily in red brick in 1889. Now known for its role in the film Priscilla Queen of the Desert. Go inside to see the amazing painted murals over the stair case walls and ceilings.
11. Next door to the Palace Hotel in the former Bank of South Australia. Built in 1889 but during the bank collapse 1893 the building became the AMP. Built in classical style with pilasters and rectangular windows with no decoration. Great symmetry and balance. Triangular pediments over the street doors. It still has the AMP logo statue across the roof line although it is now a medical clinic.
12. Opposite the AMP is the Barrier Social Democratic Club. This was a union controlled town as most people were employed in the silver, lead and zinc mines but this organisation was formed to promote socialism. It was formed in 1903 and the building erected 1904. Return to the Palace Hotel and turn northwards to the left.
13. On the next corner right is the Trades Hall. Behind it is the original simple Trades Hall which covered unionist in the mines, the railways and government service etc. It was built in 1898 on land donated by the NSW government. The elaborate corner building was erected between 1898 and 1905. A stone building with cement rendered quoins, corner door, rounded windows, and French mansard roof etc. Turn left here.
14. Opposite the City of Broken Hill Centre (look for the busts of the group of eight who were the founders of B.H.P Proprietary) is the Barrier Daily Newspaper Building. The paper started in 1908 but the building dates from earlier. The unionist newspaper the Barrier Truth was established in 1898 and moved to this building a few years later. It was much later taken over by the Barrier Daily.
15. The next building on the right is the former Sulphide Street Railway Station which was the terminus of the Silver Tramway Company track. It is now a Migration Museum and railway museum and two other museums. Across the roundabout is the Information Centre. Turn left or northwards from this corner by the former railway station.
16. Turn right at the next roundabout so you are going around the railway museums. In the next street you see the Broken Hill Ice and Produce Company. Turn left at the next intersection and go north along Sulphide Street with Sturt Park on your right. On the next corner is the impressive Wesleyan Methodist Church now the Uniting Church. Architect was Frederick Dancker from Adelaide and built in 1888. It is heritage listed. Behind it is the stone church hall built in 1885. Used 1988 for the Pro Hart carpet advert. The walk ends here or you can continue up the hill.
17. At the next street Wolfram Street turn left and a few buildings along is the former Broken Hill Jewish synagogue. It is the most isolated Jewish synagogue in the world. Opened 1911 and closed 1962. It was restored 1990 and turned into a museum. Note the Hebrew on the façade. Retrace your steps to Sulphide Street and turn left up hill.
18. You will be rewarded up the hill with an amazing castle style stone cottage on the right beyond Sturt Park. It was built around 1890 with castellations. Used as the Towers Hospital of Nurse Robertson from 1890 to 1909. The historic government hospital was built in 1889 in another location. Sturt Park was created in 1895 but only named in honour of Captain Charles Sturt in 1944 – the centenary of his explorations in the Broken Hill region. It has a memorial to the bandsmen of the sinking Titanic of 1912.
19. 141 Sulphide Street is the North Broken Hill mine bachelors’ quarters building.
20 - 24. Still in Sulphide Street is the Catholic Cathedral situated on the hill with a panoramic view of Broken Hill. Opposite the Cathedral is the former orphanage now part of the catholic primary school. It was established in 1895. Behind the Cathedral up the hill is the impressive St Joseph’s Convent. The best views of the Convent are from the Catholic School car park in Lane Street. The convent was built in 1889. Opposite with the sloping stone wall is Bishop’s House. The Diocese of Wilcannia was established in 1887 and the first Catholic Church in Broken Hill opened in 1887. The current cathedral opened in 1905.The original stone and tin church behind the Bishop’s house is the 1887 Catholic Church best seen from Mica Street.
Copper was discovered at Kuridala in 1884 and the Hampden Mine commenced during the 1890s. A Melbourne syndicate took over operations in 1897 and with increasing development of the mine in 1905 - 1906 the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company was formed. The township was surveyed as Hampden in 1910 (later called Friezland, and finally Kuridala in 1916). The Hampden Smelter operated from 1911 to 1920 with World War I being a particularly prosperous time for the company. After the war, the operations and the township declined and the Hampden Cloncurry Limited company ceased to exist in 1928. Tribute mining and further exploration and testing of the ore body has continued from 1932 through to the present day.
The Kuridala Township and Hampden Smelter are located approximately 65km south of Cloncurry and 345m above sea level, on an open plain against a background of rugged but picturesque hills.
The Cloncurry copper fields were discovered by Ernest Henry in 1867 but lack of capital and transport combined with low base metal prices precluded any major development. However, rising prices, new discoveries in the region and the promise of a railway combined with an inflow of British capital stimulated development. Additionally, Melbourne based promoters eager to develop another base metal bonanza like Broken Hill led to a resurgence of interest, especially in the Hampden mines.
The copper deposits at Kuridala (initially named Hampden) were discovered by William McPhail and Robert Johnson on their pastoral lease, Eureka, in January 1884. The Hampden mine was held by Fred Gibson in the 1890s and acquired in 1897 by a Melbourne syndicate comprising the 'Broken Hillionaires' - William Orr, William Knox, and Herman Schlapp. They floated the Hampden Copper Mines N. L. with a capital of £100,000 in £100 shares of which 200 were fully paid up. With this capital, they commenced a prospecting and stockpiling program sending specimens to Dapto and Wallaroo for testing. Government Geologist, W.E. Cameron's report on the district in 1900 discouraged investors as he reported that few of the lodes, other than the Hampden Company's main lode at Kuridala, were worth working.
A world price rise in copper in 1905, combined with a government decision in 1906 to extend the Townsville railway from Richmond to Cloncurry, stimulated further development. The Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited was registered in Victoria in March 1906 to acquire the old company's mines. However, the company only had a working capital of £35,000 after distributing vendor's shares and buying the Duchess mines. During this period there were over 20 companies investing similarly on the Cloncurry field.
The township was surveyed by the Mines Department around 1910 and was first known as Hampden after the mines discovered in the 1880s. By 1912 it was called Friezland, however was officially renamed Kuridala in October 1916 to minimise confusion with another settlement in Queensland. The reason for this change was considered to be linked to German names being unpopular at the outbreak of World War I.
Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited and its competitor, Mount Elliott, formed a special company in 1908 to finance and construct the railway extension from Cloncurry through Malbon, to Kuridala, and Mount Elliott. The company reconstructed in July 1909 by increasing its capitalisation, and concluding arrangements for a debenture issue to be secured against its proposed smelters. Its smelters were not fired until March 1911 and over the next three years 85,266 tons of ore were treated with an initial dividend of £140,000 being declared in 1913. In one month in 1915 the Hampden Smelter produced 813 tons of copper, an Australian record at that time.
Concern over the dwindling reserves of high grade ore led to William Corbould, the general manager of Mount Elliott mines, negotiating an amalgamation with Hampden Cloncurry to halt the fierce rivalry. But the latter was uninterested having consolidated its prospects in 1911 by acquiring many promising mines in the region, and enlarging its smelters and erecting new converters. In 1913, following a fire in the Hampden Consol's mine, Corbould convinced his London directors to reopen negotiations for a joint venture in the northern section of the field which still awaited a railway. Although Corbould and Huntley, the Hampden Cloncurry general manager, inspected many properties, the proposal lapsed.
The railway reached the township by 1910. A sanitary system was installed in 1911, after a four month typhoid epidemic, and a hospital erected by 1913, run by Dr. Old. It was described as the best and most modern hospital in the northwest. At its height, the town supported six hotels, five stores, four billiard saloons, three dance halls, and a cinema, two ice works, and one aerated waters factory, and Chinese gardens along the creek. There were also drapers, fruiterer, butcher, baker, timber merchant, garage, four churches, police station, court house, post office, banks, and a school with up to 280 pupils. A cyclone in December 1918 damaged the town and wrecked part of the powerhouse and smelter.
A comprehensive description of the plant and operations of the Kuridala Hampden mines and smelters was given by the Cloncurry mining warden in the Queensland Government Mining Journal of the 14th of September 1912. Ore from other company-owned mines (Duchess, Happy Salmon, MacGregor, and Trekelano) was railed in via a 1.2km branch line to the reduction plant bins, while the heavy pyrites ore from the Hampden mines was separated at the main shaft into coarse and fine products and conveyed to separate 1,500 ton capacity bins over a standard gauge railway to the plant.
A central power plant was installed with three separate Dowson pressure gas plants powered by three tandem type Kynoch gas engines of 320hp and two duplex type Hornsby gas engines of 200hp. Two Swedish General Electric Company generators of 1,250kw and 56kw running at 460 volts, supplied electricity to the machines in the works, fitting shops and mine pumps. Electric light for the mine and works was supplied by a British Thompson-Houston generator of 42kw, running at 420 volts. The fuel used in the gas producers was bituminous coal, coke or charcoal, made locally in the retorts.
The reduction plant consisted of two water-jacket furnaces, 2.1m by 1m and 4.2m by 1m, with dust chambers and a 52m high steel stack. There were two electrically driven converter vessels, each 3.2m by 2.3m. The molten product ran into a 3.7m diameter forehearth, while the slag was drawn off into double ton slag pots, run to the dump over 3 foot gauge, 42lb steel rail tracks. The copper was delivered from the forehearth to the converters. A 1.06m gauge track ran under the converters and carried the copper mould cars to the cleaning and shipping shed, at the end of which was the siding for railing out the cakes of blister copper.
The war conferred four years of prosperity on the Cloncurry district despite marketing, transport, and labour difficulties. The Hampden Cloncurry Company declared liberal dividends during 1915 - 1918: £40,000, £140,000, £52,500 and £35,000 making a total disbursement since commencing operations of £437,500. Its smelters treated over a quarter of a million tons of ore in this period, averaging over 70,000 tons annually. The company built light railways to its mines (e.g. Wee MacGregor and Trekelano) to ensure regular ore supplies and to reduce transport costs. In order to improve its ore treatment, Hampden Cloncurry installed a concentration plant in 1917. In 1918 an Edwards furnace was erected to pre-roast fine sulphide concentrates from the mill before smelting.
The dropping of the copper price control by the British government in 1918 forced the company into difficulties. Smelting was postponed until September 1919 and the company lost heavily during the next season and had to rely on ores from the Trekelano mine. Its smelter treated 69,598 tons of ore in 1920, but the company was forced to halt all operations after the Commonwealth Bank withdrew funds on copper awaiting export.
Companies and mines turned to the Theodore Labor Government for assistance but they were unsympathetic to the companies, even though they alone had the capacity to revive the Cloncurry field. More negotiations for amalgamation occurred in 1925 but failed, and in 1926 Hampden Cloncurry offered its assets for sale by tender and Mount Elliott acquired them all except for the Trekelano mine. The company was de-listed in 1928.
The rise and decline of the township reflected the company's fortunes. In 1913 there were 1,500 people increasing to 2,000 by 1920, but by 1924 this had declined to 800. With the rise of Mount Isa, Kaiser's bakehouse, the hospital, courthouse, one ice works, and a picture theatre, moved there in 1923 followed by Boyds' Hampden Hotel (renamed the Argent) in 1924. Other buildings including the police residence and Clerk of Petty Sessions house were moved to Cloncurry.
In its nine years of smelting Hampden Cloncurry had been one of Australia's largest mining companies producing 50,800 tons of copper (compared with Mount Elliott's 27,000), 21,000 ounces of gold and 381,000 ounces of silver. A more permanent achievement was its part in creating the metal fabricating company, Metal Manufacturers Limited, of which it was one of the four founders in 1916. Much of the money which built their Port Kembla works into one of the country's largest manufacturers came from the now derelict smelters in north-west Queensland.
In 1942 Mount Isa Mines bought the Kuridala Smelters for £800 and used parts to construct a copper furnace which commenced operating in April 1943 in response to wartime demands. The Tunny family continued to live at Kuridala as tributers on the Hampden and Consol mines from 1932 until 1969 and worked the mines down to 15.25m. A post office operated until 1975 and the last inhabitant, Lizzy Belch, moved into Cloncurry about 1982.
Further exploration and testing of the Kuridala ore body has occurred from 1948 up until the present with activities being undertaking by Mount Isa Mines, Broken Hill South, Enterprise Exploration, Marshall and James Boyd, Australian Selection, Kennecott Exploration, Carpentaria Exploration, Metana Minerals, A.M. Metcalfe, Dampier Mining Co Ltd, Newmont Pty Ltd, Australian Anglo American, Era South Pacific Pty Ltd, CRA Exploration Pty Ltd, BHP Minerals Ltd, Metana Minerals and Matrix Metals Ltd.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
The Mount Elliott Mining Complex is an aggregation of the remnants of copper mining and smelting operations from the early 20th century and the associated former mining township of Selwyn. The earliest copper mining at Mount Elliott was in 1906 with smelting operations commencing shortly after. Significant upgrades to the mining and smelting operations occurred under the management of W.R. Corbould during 1909 - 1910. Following these upgrades and increases in production, the Selwyn Township grew quickly and had 1500 residents by 1918. The Mount Elliott Company took over other companies on the Cloncurry field in the 1920s, including the Mount Cuthbert and Kuridala smelters. Mount Elliott operations were taken over by Mount Isa Mines in 1943 to ensure the supply of copper during World War Two. The Mount Elliott Company was eventually liquidated in 1953.
The Mount Elliott Smelter:
The existence of copper in the Leichhardt River area of north western Queensland had been known since Ernest Henry discovered the Great Australia Mine in 1867 at Cloncurry. In 1899 James Elliott discovered copper on the conical hill that became Mount Elliott, but having no capital to develop the mine, he sold an interest to James Morphett, a pastoralist of Fort Constantine station near Cloncurry. Morphett, being drought stricken, in turn sold out to John Moffat of Irvinebank, the most successful mining promoter in Queensland at the time.
Plentiful capital and cheap transport were prerequisites for developing the Cloncurry field, which had stagnated for forty years. Without capital it was impossible to explore and prove ore-bodies; without proof of large reserves of wealth it was futile to build a railway; and without a railway it was hazardous to invest capital in finding large reserves of ore. The mining investor or the railway builder had to break the impasse.
In 1906 - 1907 copper averaged £87 a ton on the London market, the highest price for thirty years, and the Cloncurry field grew. The railway was extended west of Richmond in 1905 - 1906 by the Government and mines were floated on the Melbourne Stock Exchange. At Mount Elliott a prospecting shaft had been sunk and on the 1st of August 1906 a Cornish boiler and winding plant were installed on the site.
Mount Elliott Limited was floated in Melbourne on the 13th of July 1906. In 1907 it was taken over by British and French interests and restructured. Combining with its competitor, Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited, Mount Elliott formed a special company to finance and construct the railway from Cloncurry to Malbon, Kuridala (then Friezeland) and Mount Elliott (later Selwyn). This new company then entered into an agreement with the Queensland Railways Department in July 1908.
The railway, which was known as the 'Syndicate Railway', aroused opposition in 1908 from the trade unions and Labor movement generally, who contended that railways should be State-owned. However, the Hampden-Mount Elliott Railway Bill was passed by the Queensland Parliament and assented to on the 21st of April 1908; construction finished in December 1910. The railway terminated at the Mount Elliott smelter.
By 1907 the main underlie shaft had been sunk and construction of the smelters was underway using a second-hand water-jacket blast furnace and converters. At this time, W.H. Corbould was appointed general manager of Mount Elliott Limited.
The second-hand blast furnace and converters were commissioned or 'blown in' in May 1909, but were problematic causing hold-ups. Corbould referred to the equipment in use as being the 'worst collection of worn-out junk he had ever come across'. Corbould soon convinced his directors to scrap the plant and let him design new works.
Corbould was a metallurgist and geologist as well as mine/smelter manager. He foresaw a need to obtain control and thereby ensure a reliable supply of ore from a cross-section of mines in the region. He also saw a need to implement an effective strategy to manage the economies of smelting low-grade ore. Smelting operations in the region were made difficult by the technical and economic problems posed by the deterioration in the grade of ore. Corbould resolved the issue by a process of blending ores with different chemical properties, increasing the throughput capacity of the smelter and by championing the unification of smelting operations in the region. In 1912, Corbould acquired Hampden Consols Mine at Kuridala for Mount Elliott Limited, followed with the purchases of other small mines in the district.
Walkers Limited of Maryborough was commissioned to manufacture a new 200 ton water jacket furnace for the smelters. An air compressor and blower for the smelters were constructed in the powerhouse and an electric motor and dynamo provided power for the crane and lighting for the smelter and mine.
The new smelter was blown in September 1910, a month after the first train arrived, and it ran well, producing 2040 tons of blister copper by the end of the year. The new smelting plant made it possible to cope with low-grade sulphide ores at Mount Elliott. The use of 1000 tons of low-grade sulphide ores bought from the Hampden Consols Mine in 1911 made it clear that if a supply of higher sulphur ore could be obtained and blended, performance, and economy would improve. Accordingly, the company bought a number of smaller mines in the district in 1912.
Corbould mined with cut and fill stoping but a young Mines Inspector condemned the system, ordered it dismantled and replaced with square set timbering. In 1911, after gradual movement in stopes on the No. 3 level, the smelter was closed for two months. Nevertheless, 5447 tons of blister copper was produced in 1911, rising to 6690 tons in 1912 - the company's best year. Many of the surviving structures at the site were built at this time.
Troubles for Mount Elliott started in 1913. In February, a fire at the Consols Mine closed it for months. In June, a thirteen week strike closed the whole operation, severely depleting the workforce. The year 1913 was also bad for industrial accidents in the area, possibly due to inexperienced people replacing the strikers. Nevertheless, the company paid generous dividends that year.
At the end of 1914 smelting ceased for more than a year due to shortage of ore. Although 3200 tons of blister copper was produced in 1913, production fell to 1840 tons in 1914 and the workforce dwindled to only 40 men. For the second half of 1915 and early 1916 the smelter treated ore railed south from Mount Cuthbert. At the end of July 1916 the smelting plant at Selwyn was dismantled except for the flue chambers and stacks. A new furnace with a capacity of 500 tons per day was built, a large amount of second-hand equipment was obtained and the converters were increased in size.
After the enlarged furnace was commissioned in June 1917, continuing industrial unrest retarded production which amounted to only 1000 tons of copper that year. The point of contention was the efficiency of the new smelter which processed twice as much ore while employing fewer men. The company decided to close down the smelter in October and reduce the size of the furnace, the largest in Australia, from 6.5m to 5.5m. In the meantime the price of copper had almost doubled from 1916 due to wartime consumption of munitions.
The new furnace commenced on the 16th of January 1918 and 77,482 tons of ore were smelted yielding 3580 tons of blister copper which were sent to the Bowen refinery before export to Britain. Local coal and coke supply was a problem and materials were being sourced from the distant Bowen Colliery. The smelter had a good run for almost a year except for a strike in July and another in December, which caused Corbould to close down the plant until New Year. In 1919, following relaxation of wartime controls by the British Metal Corporation, the copper price plunged from about £110 per ton at the start of the year to £75 per ton in April, dashing the company's optimism regarding treatment of low grade ores. The smelter finally closed after two months operation and most employees were laid off.
For much of the period 1919 to 1922, Corbould was in England trying to raise capital to reorganise the company's operations but he failed and resigned from the company in 1922. The Mount Elliott Company took over the assets of the other companies on the Cloncurry field in the 1920s - Mount Cuthbert in 1925 and Kuridala in 1926. Mount Isa Mines bought the Mount Elliott plant and machinery, including the three smelters, in 1943 for £2,300, enabling them to start copper production in the middle of the Second World War. The Mount Elliott Company was finally liquidated in 1953.
In 1950 A.E. Powell took up the Mount Elliott Reward Claim at Selwyn and worked close to the old smelter buildings. An open cut mine commenced at Starra, south of Mount Elliott and Selwyn, in 1988 and is Australia's third largest copper producer producing copper-gold concentrates from flotation and gold bullion from carbon-in-leach processing.
Profitable copper-gold ore bodies were recently proved at depth beneath the Mount Elliott smelter and old underground workings by Cyprus Gold Australia Pty Ltd. These deposits were subsequently acquired by Arimco Mining Pty Ltd for underground development which commenced in July 1993. A decline tunnel portal, ore and overburden dumps now occupy a large area of the Maggie Creek valley south-west of the smelter which was formerly the site of early miner's camps.
The Old Selwyn Township:
In 1907, the first hotel, run by H. Williams, was opened at the site. The township was surveyed later, around 1910, by the Mines Department. The town was to be situated north of the mine and smelter operations adjacent the railway, about 1.5km distant. It took its name from the nearby Selwyn Ranges which were named, during Burke's expedition, after the Victorian Government Geologist, A.R. Selwyn. The town has also been known by the name of Mount Elliott, after the nearby mines and smelter.
Many of the residents either worked at the Mount Elliott Mine and Smelter or worked in the service industries which grew around the mining and smelting operations. Little documentation exists about the everyday life of the town's residents. Surrounding sheep and cattle stations, however, meant that meat was available cheaply and vegetables grown in the area were delivered to the township by horse and cart. Imported commodities were, however, expensive.
By 1910 the town had four hotels. There was also an aerated water manufacturer, three stores, four fruiterers, a butcher, baker, saddler, garage, police, hospital, banks, post office (officially from 1906 to 1928, then unofficially until 1975) and a railway station. There was even an orchestra of ten players in 1912. The population of Selwyn rose from 1000 in 1911 to 1500 in 1918, before gradually declining.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
A pair of CP GP38-2's spot cars to the acid loadout inside the Cominco lead zinc smelter at Trail BC
Feininger, Andreas,, 1906-1999,, photographer.
American Smelting and Refining, Garfield, Utah
1942 Nov.
1 transparency : color.
Notes:
Attributed to A. Feininger.
Title from FSA or OWI agency caption.
Transfer from U.S. Office of War Information, 1944.
Subjects:
American Smelting and Refining
World War, 1939-1945
Copper mining
Canyons
United States--Utah--Garfield
Format: Transparencies--Color
Rights Info: No known restrictions on publication.
Repository: Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
Part Of: Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Collection 12002-61 (DLC) 93845501
General information about the FSA/OWI Color Photographs is available at hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.fsac
Higher resolution image is available (Persistent URL): hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsac.1a34854
Call Number: LC-USW36-406
Ex Rhodesian class 19 number 328 behind the smelter at BCL Selebi Phikwe copper mine on 26 April 2016. A loaded ore train was brought here once a month to be weighed. The whole operation took a while, they separated the wagons and weighed them one at a time, the control building for the equipment is the structure to the left side of the wagons. The weighbridge was on the opposite side of the main complex to the uploading bins which didn't seem very practical.
BCL Selebi Phikwe, Botswana
The Mount Elliott Mining Complex is an aggregation of the remnants of copper mining and smelting operations from the early 20th century and the associated former mining township of Selwyn. The earliest copper mining at Mount Elliott was in 1906 with smelting operations commencing shortly after. Significant upgrades to the mining and smelting operations occurred under the management of W.R. Corbould during 1909 - 1910. Following these upgrades and increases in production, the Selwyn Township grew quickly and had 1500 residents by 1918. The Mount Elliott Company took over other companies on the Cloncurry field in the 1920s, including the Mount Cuthbert and Kuridala smelters. Mount Elliott operations were taken over by Mount Isa Mines in 1943 to ensure the supply of copper during World War Two. The Mount Elliott Company was eventually liquidated in 1953.
The Mount Elliott Smelter:
The existence of copper in the Leichhardt River area of north western Queensland had been known since Ernest Henry discovered the Great Australia Mine in 1867 at Cloncurry. In 1899 James Elliott discovered copper on the conical hill that became Mount Elliott, but having no capital to develop the mine, he sold an interest to James Morphett, a pastoralist of Fort Constantine station near Cloncurry. Morphett, being drought stricken, in turn sold out to John Moffat of Irvinebank, the most successful mining promoter in Queensland at the time.
Plentiful capital and cheap transport were prerequisites for developing the Cloncurry field, which had stagnated for forty years. Without capital it was impossible to explore and prove ore-bodies; without proof of large reserves of wealth it was futile to build a railway; and without a railway it was hazardous to invest capital in finding large reserves of ore. The mining investor or the railway builder had to break the impasse.
In 1906 - 1907 copper averaged £87 a ton on the London market, the highest price for thirty years, and the Cloncurry field grew. The railway was extended west of Richmond in 1905 - 1906 by the Government and mines were floated on the Melbourne Stock Exchange. At Mount Elliott a prospecting shaft had been sunk and on the 1st of August 1906 a Cornish boiler and winding plant were installed on the site.
Mount Elliott Limited was floated in Melbourne on the 13th of July 1906. In 1907 it was taken over by British and French interests and restructured. Combining with its competitor, Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited, Mount Elliott formed a special company to finance and construct the railway from Cloncurry to Malbon, Kuridala (then Friezeland) and Mount Elliott (later Selwyn). This new company then entered into an agreement with the Queensland Railways Department in July 1908.
The railway, which was known as the 'Syndicate Railway', aroused opposition in 1908 from the trade unions and Labor movement generally, who contended that railways should be State-owned. However, the Hampden-Mount Elliott Railway Bill was passed by the Queensland Parliament and assented to on the 21st of April 1908; construction finished in December 1910. The railway terminated at the Mount Elliott smelter.
By 1907 the main underlie shaft had been sunk and construction of the smelters was underway using a second-hand water-jacket blast furnace and converters. At this time, W.H. Corbould was appointed general manager of Mount Elliott Limited.
The second-hand blast furnace and converters were commissioned or 'blown in' in May 1909, but were problematic causing hold-ups. Corbould referred to the equipment in use as being the 'worst collection of worn-out junk he had ever come across'. Corbould soon convinced his directors to scrap the plant and let him design new works.
Corbould was a metallurgist and geologist as well as mine/smelter manager. He foresaw a need to obtain control and thereby ensure a reliable supply of ore from a cross-section of mines in the region. He also saw a need to implement an effective strategy to manage the economies of smelting low-grade ore. Smelting operations in the region were made difficult by the technical and economic problems posed by the deterioration in the grade of ore. Corbould resolved the issue by a process of blending ores with different chemical properties, increasing the throughput capacity of the smelter and by championing the unification of smelting operations in the region. In 1912, Corbould acquired Hampden Consols Mine at Kuridala for Mount Elliott Limited, followed with the purchases of other small mines in the district.
Walkers Limited of Maryborough was commissioned to manufacture a new 200 ton water jacket furnace for the smelters. An air compressor and blower for the smelters were constructed in the powerhouse and an electric motor and dynamo provided power for the crane and lighting for the smelter and mine.
The new smelter was blown in September 1910, a month after the first train arrived, and it ran well, producing 2040 tons of blister copper by the end of the year. The new smelting plant made it possible to cope with low-grade sulphide ores at Mount Elliott. The use of 1000 tons of low-grade sulphide ores bought from the Hampden Consols Mine in 1911 made it clear that if a supply of higher sulphur ore could be obtained and blended, performance, and economy would improve. Accordingly, the company bought a number of smaller mines in the district in 1912.
Corbould mined with cut and fill stoping but a young Mines Inspector condemned the system, ordered it dismantled and replaced with square set timbering. In 1911, after gradual movement in stopes on the No. 3 level, the smelter was closed for two months. Nevertheless, 5447 tons of blister copper was produced in 1911, rising to 6690 tons in 1912 - the company's best year. Many of the surviving structures at the site were built at this time.
Troubles for Mount Elliott started in 1913. In February, a fire at the Consols Mine closed it for months. In June, a thirteen week strike closed the whole operation, severely depleting the workforce. The year 1913 was also bad for industrial accidents in the area, possibly due to inexperienced people replacing the strikers. Nevertheless, the company paid generous dividends that year.
At the end of 1914 smelting ceased for more than a year due to shortage of ore. Although 3200 tons of blister copper was produced in 1913, production fell to 1840 tons in 1914 and the workforce dwindled to only 40 men. For the second half of 1915 and early 1916 the smelter treated ore railed south from Mount Cuthbert. At the end of July 1916 the smelting plant at Selwyn was dismantled except for the flue chambers and stacks. A new furnace with a capacity of 500 tons per day was built, a large amount of second-hand equipment was obtained and the converters were increased in size.
After the enlarged furnace was commissioned in June 1917, continuing industrial unrest retarded production which amounted to only 1000 tons of copper that year. The point of contention was the efficiency of the new smelter which processed twice as much ore while employing fewer men. The company decided to close down the smelter in October and reduce the size of the furnace, the largest in Australia, from 6.5m to 5.5m. In the meantime the price of copper had almost doubled from 1916 due to wartime consumption of munitions.
The new furnace commenced on the 16th of January 1918 and 77,482 tons of ore were smelted yielding 3580 tons of blister copper which were sent to the Bowen refinery before export to Britain. Local coal and coke supply was a problem and materials were being sourced from the distant Bowen Colliery. The smelter had a good run for almost a year except for a strike in July and another in December, which caused Corbould to close down the plant until New Year. In 1919, following relaxation of wartime controls by the British Metal Corporation, the copper price plunged from about £110 per ton at the start of the year to £75 per ton in April, dashing the company's optimism regarding treatment of low grade ores. The smelter finally closed after two months operation and most employees were laid off.
For much of the period 1919 to 1922, Corbould was in England trying to raise capital to reorganise the company's operations but he failed and resigned from the company in 1922. The Mount Elliott Company took over the assets of the other companies on the Cloncurry field in the 1920s - Mount Cuthbert in 1925 and Kuridala in 1926. Mount Isa Mines bought the Mount Elliott plant and machinery, including the three smelters, in 1943 for £2,300, enabling them to start copper production in the middle of the Second World War. The Mount Elliott Company was finally liquidated in 1953.
In 1950 A.E. Powell took up the Mount Elliott Reward Claim at Selwyn and worked close to the old smelter buildings. An open cut mine commenced at Starra, south of Mount Elliott and Selwyn, in 1988 and is Australia's third largest copper producer producing copper-gold concentrates from flotation and gold bullion from carbon-in-leach processing.
Profitable copper-gold ore bodies were recently proved at depth beneath the Mount Elliott smelter and old underground workings by Cyprus Gold Australia Pty Ltd. These deposits were subsequently acquired by Arimco Mining Pty Ltd for underground development which commenced in July 1993. A decline tunnel portal, ore and overburden dumps now occupy a large area of the Maggie Creek valley south-west of the smelter which was formerly the site of early miner's camps.
The Old Selwyn Township:
In 1907, the first hotel, run by H. Williams, was opened at the site. The township was surveyed later, around 1910, by the Mines Department. The town was to be situated north of the mine and smelter operations adjacent the railway, about 1.5km distant. It took its name from the nearby Selwyn Ranges which were named, during Burke's expedition, after the Victorian Government Geologist, A.R. Selwyn. The town has also been known by the name of Mount Elliott, after the nearby mines and smelter.
Many of the residents either worked at the Mount Elliott Mine and Smelter or worked in the service industries which grew around the mining and smelting operations. Little documentation exists about the everyday life of the town's residents. Surrounding sheep and cattle stations, however, meant that meat was available cheaply and vegetables grown in the area were delivered to the township by horse and cart. Imported commodities were, however, expensive.
By 1910 the town had four hotels. There was also an aerated water manufacturer, three stores, four fruiterers, a butcher, baker, saddler, garage, police, hospital, banks, post office (officially from 1906 to 1928, then unofficially until 1975) and a railway station. There was even an orchestra of ten players in 1912. The population of Selwyn rose from 1000 in 1911 to 1500 in 1918, before gradually declining.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
Some more family history.
I don't remember the exact story of this Dyane. It was bought very cheap, smelt like cigarettes and turned out to be too bad to restore. So it was sold. Or scrapped. At least, that's what my memory thinks to remember. Not sure if it's true.
I can't decipher the license plate, so I don't know if it still exists.
That's it.
No more Mister Nice Guy.
I'm tired of being the Underdog all the time. I'm tired of taking the shit that the world always throws at me.
It'd time to turn over a "new leaf."
I scaled the fire escape at the back of the Smelting Plant.
I knew Bucky was nearby, and I knew he was soon going to pay.
I was now on the roof of the plant. I felt the pockets of my new jacket.
Bingo.
I pulled the Swiss Army Knife out of my pocket and entered the building via the fire escape.
A ladder took me down onto a platform above what looked like a belt of melted down copper.
A worker was smelting a copper plate in the orange, lava like substance.
I quietly climbed down another ladder that took me to the ground floor.
Time to test out my "assassin" skills.
I quietly crept up on the worker, and very silently, angled my knife.
The worker must of felt my presence, and turned.
Though it was too late.
My knife had embedded itself in the mans back.
He grumbled under his helmet and fell onto the floor.
Not bad for a first attempt. I pulled the body up to some boxes under the platform and did my best to hide it.
Someone was going to discover the blood soon, but by the time they would, I'd be long gone.
I've got to find myself a Soldier.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bruce Banner moves from #21 to #14 Gotham Smelting Plant
A Copper Basin smelter run comes through Hayden, AZ with the 503, 504 & 302. The thick smoke engulfing the town was coming from a big house fire a block away. The firefighters battled the blaze but unfortunately the house was destroyed. The weird thing is everyone was going about their business as usual. Kids were at the bus stop talking and laughing all the while a thick plume of smoke billowed through town. When we asked the CBRY yardmaster about it he said that it happens a lot. Pretty crazy!
Kennecott Copper's Garfield Smelter. This smelter west of Salt Lake City was built a century ago to process ore from the Bingham Canyon Mine, now the largest man-made excavation on earth. After a series of corporate takeovers, mergers and asset sales, the Bingham Canyon mine and the Garfield Smelter are now owned by the Rio Tinto group. These operations are the second largest producer of copper in the U.S., accounting for about 8 percent of the county's production. The monumental Garfield Smelter stack is 177 feet in diameter at the base with walls that are 12-feet thick. At the top it is 40 feet in diameter. It is the fourth tallest smokestack in the world. This monumental smokestack was essential in the early days of the mining operation to disperse noxious, toxic sulfur fumes into higher wind currents. These days, nearly all of the sulfur fumes are captured and used in the manufacture of sulfuric acid at an adjacent facility. Tooele, Tooele Co., Utah.
A set of Freeport McMoRan GP38's switch acid tanks at the huge Morenci Smelter and Concentrator operation above Morenci, Arizona. This operation was built in the 1960s and 70s to replace the original Phelps Dodge operation here; this used to be the original townsite of Morenci, which was swallowed up in expansion of the operation and a new town built to the south. This photo is off the #191 highway--former US #666! The locomotive and car shops are to the right.
Hughes and the origins of Wallaroo and the smelters.
Wallaroo is a contraction of two local Narrunga words meaning “wallabies urine.” Why did the original owner Robert Miller adopt these words to name his pastoral sheep? Why not call it quandong or some other innocuous Narrunga word? When Hughes took over Wallaroo run in 1857 he received great help from King Tommy of the Narrunga people. The Wallaroo run was situated just to the south of Point Riley which is just to the north of Wallaroo North beach. No grand homestead was ever built on the Wallaroo run as John Duncan was just the manager. In 1859 one of Hughes’ shepherds, John Boor found knobs of green copper in stone by a wombat burrow on the property in December 1859. The Wallaroo Mines were actually located at Kadina (Narrunga for lizard plain).
But the story of Wallaroo, rather than Wallaroo Mines is about smelting copper rather than mining it. Wallaroo was and still is a major SA port and so it was logical that smelters be established there near the only source of transport - shipping. The first shipment of copper left Wallaroo in July 1860; the first shipment of smelted copper left Wallaroo in January 1862. The current Hughes smelter chimney left at Wallaroo was one of thirteen smelter stacks or chimneys. Most of the stacks were built by the mid-1860s with the first built in 1861. The largest was 120 feet high. Walter Watson Hughes owned the smelter works as well as most of the shares in the copper mining companies. The township of Wallaroo emerged adjacent to the smelters as a government town in 1861 with the first Post Office opening in 1863 and the first school in 1861. The Rounsevell coach service linked Wallaroo with Adelaide via a steamer connection from Port Clinton; the Customs House was open for business by 1862; and a desalination plant owned by Walter Hughes was operating by 1862 to provide water for the smelters. Water was also a problem for the Wallaroo Mines as the water table was high and necessitated a large pump house to pump water from the deep shafts. It was 1890 before reticulated water from Beetaloo Reservoir near Crystal Brook reached Wallaroo. Within a few years of foundation Wallaroo was a significant town with the “Copper Triangle” towns of Wallaroo, Kadina and Moonta. Churches, schools, shops and businesses all made this district the major focus of the state. Because of its importance Wallaroo and Kadina had a rail link to Adelaide via Port Wakefield and Balaklava by 1878. A number of the streets of the town commemorate the names of major investors in the Wallaroo Mining Company or others involved in copper mining names such as Bagot, Hughes, Hay, Stirling, Smith ( from Robert Barr Smith), Elder, Duncan( nephew of Hughes) etc. Other streets reflecting the Cornish mining and Welsh smelting history of the town include Cornish, England, Scotland, and Wales streets. Hughes was a benefactor of “his” town of Wallaroo as he provided water from his desalination plant for the town, he donated land to the Wesleyans to build their church and in 1862 he donated land to his Presbyterian church to erect a church. As a Scot Sir Walter Watson Hughes was a staunch Presbyterian. The foundation stone of that church was laid by John Duncan senior in September 1864. Hughes and Duncan were two of the original trustees of this church and Hughes promised £150 a year to support a Presbyterian minister. In 1863 he donated land and £20 for the erection of a Congregational Church in Wallaroo. Sophia Hughes donated a fine piano to the Wallaroo Institute in the 1870s.
Wallaroo Mines.
On the fringes of Kadina are some impressive relics of the copper mining era but unfortunately most of the industrial buildings were de-constructed and the materials salvaged for sale when the mine closed in 1922. The major Wallaroo Mines began operations for Hughes and his business associates in 1859. The town of Kadina was surveyed next to the mines in 1861. But Hughes and his Wallaroo Mining Company did not have all the successful mining leases. The New Cornwall Mine opened by another company in 1861. That mine closed in 1870. The Kurilla Mine opened in 1862 and operated until 1877 when it was purchased by Hughes’s Wallaroo Mining Company and the Matta Mine began operations in 1862 before closing in 1870. After 1870 the Wallaroo Mining Company dominated the whole site. There are still some solid remains such as the impressive stone Harvey’s Enginehouse. The Harvey engine was used to pump water from the shafts and it was installed in 1876 when the tower block was erected. Beyond Harvey’s Enginehouse is the solid stone Explosive’s Magazine erected in 1865. Apart from the mine structures Wallaroo Mines township remains. It has the wonderful Wallaroo Mines Institute building, the old pioneer cemetery and the site of the former Wallaroo Mines Methodist Church. The Wallaroo Mines Institute was erected and opened in 1902 but a Mechanics Institute was established here earlier in 1862. The 1902 Institute has a classical style façade and a non-regular sloped roof line. When the nearby Methodist Church at Wallaroo Mines was demolished in 1980 this Institute became St. Piran’s Methodist Church, which was part of the Uniting Church. St. Piran is the patron saint of Cornwall and the patron saint of tin miners. The church ceased services in 2003. The burials in the Wallaroo Mines cemetery were re-interred in the Kadina cemetery when the cemetery closed. The Wesleyan Methodist Church here was built in 1867 and demolished in 1980. The parsonage is still behind the church site. The expansive and grand Wallaroo Mines School built in 1878 was unfortunately demolished in 1977. Yet the “modern” school built to replace it is now at the end of its useful life. If the government had restored the old stone school it would still service the community for another hundred years.
The Mount Elliott Mining Complex is an aggregation of the remnants of copper mining and smelting operations from the early 20th century and the associated former mining township of Selwyn. The earliest copper mining at Mount Elliott was in 1906 with smelting operations commencing shortly after. Significant upgrades to the mining and smelting operations occurred under the management of W.R. Corbould during 1909 - 1910. Following these upgrades and increases in production, the Selwyn Township grew quickly and had 1500 residents by 1918. The Mount Elliott Company took over other companies on the Cloncurry field in the 1920s, including the Mount Cuthbert and Kuridala smelters. Mount Elliott operations were taken over by Mount Isa Mines in 1943 to ensure the supply of copper during World War Two. The Mount Elliott Company was eventually liquidated in 1953.
The Mount Elliott Smelter:
The existence of copper in the Leichhardt River area of north western Queensland had been known since Ernest Henry discovered the Great Australia Mine in 1867 at Cloncurry. In 1899 James Elliott discovered copper on the conical hill that became Mount Elliott, but having no capital to develop the mine, he sold an interest to James Morphett, a pastoralist of Fort Constantine station near Cloncurry. Morphett, being drought stricken, in turn sold out to John Moffat of Irvinebank, the most successful mining promoter in Queensland at the time.
Plentiful capital and cheap transport were prerequisites for developing the Cloncurry field, which had stagnated for forty years. Without capital it was impossible to explore and prove ore-bodies; without proof of large reserves of wealth it was futile to build a railway; and without a railway it was hazardous to invest capital in finding large reserves of ore. The mining investor or the railway builder had to break the impasse.
In 1906 - 1907 copper averaged £87 a ton on the London market, the highest price for thirty years, and the Cloncurry field grew. The railway was extended west of Richmond in 1905 - 1906 by the Government and mines were floated on the Melbourne Stock Exchange. At Mount Elliott a prospecting shaft had been sunk and on the 1st of August 1906 a Cornish boiler and winding plant were installed on the site.
Mount Elliott Limited was floated in Melbourne on the 13th of July 1906. In 1907 it was taken over by British and French interests and restructured. Combining with its competitor, Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited, Mount Elliott formed a special company to finance and construct the railway from Cloncurry to Malbon, Kuridala (then Friezeland) and Mount Elliott (later Selwyn). This new company then entered into an agreement with the Queensland Railways Department in July 1908.
The railway, which was known as the 'Syndicate Railway', aroused opposition in 1908 from the trade unions and Labor movement generally, who contended that railways should be State-owned. However, the Hampden-Mount Elliott Railway Bill was passed by the Queensland Parliament and assented to on the 21st of April 1908; construction finished in December 1910. The railway terminated at the Mount Elliott smelter.
By 1907 the main underlie shaft had been sunk and construction of the smelters was underway using a second-hand water-jacket blast furnace and converters. At this time, W.H. Corbould was appointed general manager of Mount Elliott Limited.
The second-hand blast furnace and converters were commissioned or 'blown in' in May 1909, but were problematic causing hold-ups. Corbould referred to the equipment in use as being the 'worst collection of worn-out junk he had ever come across'. Corbould soon convinced his directors to scrap the plant and let him design new works.
Corbould was a metallurgist and geologist as well as mine/smelter manager. He foresaw a need to obtain control and thereby ensure a reliable supply of ore from a cross-section of mines in the region. He also saw a need to implement an effective strategy to manage the economies of smelting low-grade ore. Smelting operations in the region were made difficult by the technical and economic problems posed by the deterioration in the grade of ore. Corbould resolved the issue by a process of blending ores with different chemical properties, increasing the throughput capacity of the smelter and by championing the unification of smelting operations in the region. In 1912, Corbould acquired Hampden Consols Mine at Kuridala for Mount Elliott Limited, followed with the purchases of other small mines in the district.
Walkers Limited of Maryborough was commissioned to manufacture a new 200 ton water jacket furnace for the smelters. An air compressor and blower for the smelters were constructed in the powerhouse and an electric motor and dynamo provided power for the crane and lighting for the smelter and mine.
The new smelter was blown in September 1910, a month after the first train arrived, and it ran well, producing 2040 tons of blister copper by the end of the year. The new smelting plant made it possible to cope with low-grade sulphide ores at Mount Elliott. The use of 1000 tons of low-grade sulphide ores bought from the Hampden Consols Mine in 1911 made it clear that if a supply of higher sulphur ore could be obtained and blended, performance, and economy would improve. Accordingly, the company bought a number of smaller mines in the district in 1912.
Corbould mined with cut and fill stoping but a young Mines Inspector condemned the system, ordered it dismantled and replaced with square set timbering. In 1911, after gradual movement in stopes on the No. 3 level, the smelter was closed for two months. Nevertheless, 5447 tons of blister copper was produced in 1911, rising to 6690 tons in 1912 - the company's best year. Many of the surviving structures at the site were built at this time.
Troubles for Mount Elliott started in 1913. In February, a fire at the Consols Mine closed it for months. In June, a thirteen week strike closed the whole operation, severely depleting the workforce. The year 1913 was also bad for industrial accidents in the area, possibly due to inexperienced people replacing the strikers. Nevertheless, the company paid generous dividends that year.
At the end of 1914 smelting ceased for more than a year due to shortage of ore. Although 3200 tons of blister copper was produced in 1913, production fell to 1840 tons in 1914 and the workforce dwindled to only 40 men. For the second half of 1915 and early 1916 the smelter treated ore railed south from Mount Cuthbert. At the end of July 1916 the smelting plant at Selwyn was dismantled except for the flue chambers and stacks. A new furnace with a capacity of 500 tons per day was built, a large amount of second-hand equipment was obtained and the converters were increased in size.
After the enlarged furnace was commissioned in June 1917, continuing industrial unrest retarded production which amounted to only 1000 tons of copper that year. The point of contention was the efficiency of the new smelter which processed twice as much ore while employing fewer men. The company decided to close down the smelter in October and reduce the size of the furnace, the largest in Australia, from 6.5m to 5.5m. In the meantime the price of copper had almost doubled from 1916 due to wartime consumption of munitions.
The new furnace commenced on the 16th of January 1918 and 77,482 tons of ore were smelted yielding 3580 tons of blister copper which were sent to the Bowen refinery before export to Britain. Local coal and coke supply was a problem and materials were being sourced from the distant Bowen Colliery. The smelter had a good run for almost a year except for a strike in July and another in December, which caused Corbould to close down the plant until New Year. In 1919, following relaxation of wartime controls by the British Metal Corporation, the copper price plunged from about £110 per ton at the start of the year to £75 per ton in April, dashing the company's optimism regarding treatment of low grade ores. The smelter finally closed after two months operation and most employees were laid off.
For much of the period 1919 to 1922, Corbould was in England trying to raise capital to reorganise the company's operations but he failed and resigned from the company in 1922. The Mount Elliott Company took over the assets of the other companies on the Cloncurry field in the 1920s - Mount Cuthbert in 1925 and Kuridala in 1926. Mount Isa Mines bought the Mount Elliott plant and machinery, including the three smelters, in 1943 for £2,300, enabling them to start copper production in the middle of the Second World War. The Mount Elliott Company was finally liquidated in 1953.
In 1950 A.E. Powell took up the Mount Elliott Reward Claim at Selwyn and worked close to the old smelter buildings. An open cut mine commenced at Starra, south of Mount Elliott and Selwyn, in 1988 and is Australia's third largest copper producer producing copper-gold concentrates from flotation and gold bullion from carbon-in-leach processing.
Profitable copper-gold ore bodies were recently proved at depth beneath the Mount Elliott smelter and old underground workings by Cyprus Gold Australia Pty Ltd. These deposits were subsequently acquired by Arimco Mining Pty Ltd for underground development which commenced in July 1993. A decline tunnel portal, ore and overburden dumps now occupy a large area of the Maggie Creek valley south-west of the smelter which was formerly the site of early miner's camps.
The Old Selwyn Township:
In 1907, the first hotel, run by H. Williams, was opened at the site. The township was surveyed later, around 1910, by the Mines Department. The town was to be situated north of the mine and smelter operations adjacent the railway, about 1.5km distant. It took its name from the nearby Selwyn Ranges which were named, during Burke's expedition, after the Victorian Government Geologist, A.R. Selwyn. The town has also been known by the name of Mount Elliott, after the nearby mines and smelter.
Many of the residents either worked at the Mount Elliott Mine and Smelter or worked in the service industries which grew around the mining and smelting operations. Little documentation exists about the everyday life of the town's residents. Surrounding sheep and cattle stations, however, meant that meat was available cheaply and vegetables grown in the area were delivered to the township by horse and cart. Imported commodities were, however, expensive.
By 1910 the town had four hotels. There was also an aerated water manufacturer, three stores, four fruiterers, a butcher, baker, saddler, garage, police, hospital, banks, post office (officially from 1906 to 1928, then unofficially until 1975) and a railway station. There was even an orchestra of ten players in 1912. The population of Selwyn rose from 1000 in 1911 to 1500 in 1918, before gradually declining.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
The Mount Elliott Mining Complex is an aggregation of the remnants of copper mining and smelting operations from the early 20th century and the associated former mining township of Selwyn. The earliest copper mining at Mount Elliott was in 1906 with smelting operations commencing shortly after. Significant upgrades to the mining and smelting operations occurred under the management of W.R. Corbould during 1909 - 1910. Following these upgrades and increases in production, the Selwyn Township grew quickly and had 1500 residents by 1918. The Mount Elliott Company took over other companies on the Cloncurry field in the 1920s, including the Mount Cuthbert and Kuridala smelters. Mount Elliott operations were taken over by Mount Isa Mines in 1943 to ensure the supply of copper during World War Two. The Mount Elliott Company was eventually liquidated in 1953.
The Mount Elliott Smelter:
The existence of copper in the Leichhardt River area of north western Queensland had been known since Ernest Henry discovered the Great Australia Mine in 1867 at Cloncurry. In 1899 James Elliott discovered copper on the conical hill that became Mount Elliott, but having no capital to develop the mine, he sold an interest to James Morphett, a pastoralist of Fort Constantine station near Cloncurry. Morphett, being drought stricken, in turn sold out to John Moffat of Irvinebank, the most successful mining promoter in Queensland at the time.
Plentiful capital and cheap transport were prerequisites for developing the Cloncurry field, which had stagnated for forty years. Without capital it was impossible to explore and prove ore-bodies; without proof of large reserves of wealth it was futile to build a railway; and without a railway it was hazardous to invest capital in finding large reserves of ore. The mining investor or the railway builder had to break the impasse.
In 1906 - 1907 copper averaged £87 a ton on the London market, the highest price for thirty years, and the Cloncurry field grew. The railway was extended west of Richmond in 1905 - 1906 by the Government and mines were floated on the Melbourne Stock Exchange. At Mount Elliott a prospecting shaft had been sunk and on the 1st of August 1906 a Cornish boiler and winding plant were installed on the site.
Mount Elliott Limited was floated in Melbourne on the 13th of July 1906. In 1907 it was taken over by British and French interests and restructured. Combining with its competitor, Hampden Cloncurry Copper Mines Limited, Mount Elliott formed a special company to finance and construct the railway from Cloncurry to Malbon, Kuridala (then Friezeland) and Mount Elliott (later Selwyn). This new company then entered into an agreement with the Queensland Railways Department in July 1908.
The railway, which was known as the 'Syndicate Railway', aroused opposition in 1908 from the trade unions and Labor movement generally, who contended that railways should be State-owned. However, the Hampden-Mount Elliott Railway Bill was passed by the Queensland Parliament and assented to on the 21st of April 1908; construction finished in December 1910. The railway terminated at the Mount Elliott smelter.
By 1907 the main underlie shaft had been sunk and construction of the smelters was underway using a second-hand water-jacket blast furnace and converters. At this time, W.H. Corbould was appointed general manager of Mount Elliott Limited.
The second-hand blast furnace and converters were commissioned or 'blown in' in May 1909, but were problematic causing hold-ups. Corbould referred to the equipment in use as being the 'worst collection of worn-out junk he had ever come across'. Corbould soon convinced his directors to scrap the plant and let him design new works.
Corbould was a metallurgist and geologist as well as mine/smelter manager. He foresaw a need to obtain control and thereby ensure a reliable supply of ore from a cross-section of mines in the region. He also saw a need to implement an effective strategy to manage the economies of smelting low-grade ore. Smelting operations in the region were made difficult by the technical and economic problems posed by the deterioration in the grade of ore. Corbould resolved the issue by a process of blending ores with different chemical properties, increasing the throughput capacity of the smelter and by championing the unification of smelting operations in the region. In 1912, Corbould acquired Hampden Consols Mine at Kuridala for Mount Elliott Limited, followed with the purchases of other small mines in the district.
Walkers Limited of Maryborough was commissioned to manufacture a new 200 ton water jacket furnace for the smelters. An air compressor and blower for the smelters were constructed in the powerhouse and an electric motor and dynamo provided power for the crane and lighting for the smelter and mine.
The new smelter was blown in September 1910, a month after the first train arrived, and it ran well, producing 2040 tons of blister copper by the end of the year. The new smelting plant made it possible to cope with low-grade sulphide ores at Mount Elliott. The use of 1000 tons of low-grade sulphide ores bought from the Hampden Consols Mine in 1911 made it clear that if a supply of higher sulphur ore could be obtained and blended, performance, and economy would improve. Accordingly, the company bought a number of smaller mines in the district in 1912.
Corbould mined with cut and fill stoping but a young Mines Inspector condemned the system, ordered it dismantled and replaced with square set timbering. In 1911, after gradual movement in stopes on the No. 3 level, the smelter was closed for two months. Nevertheless, 5447 tons of blister copper was produced in 1911, rising to 6690 tons in 1912 - the company's best year. Many of the surviving structures at the site were built at this time.
Troubles for Mount Elliott started in 1913. In February, a fire at the Consols Mine closed it for months. In June, a thirteen week strike closed the whole operation, severely depleting the workforce. The year 1913 was also bad for industrial accidents in the area, possibly due to inexperienced people replacing the strikers. Nevertheless, the company paid generous dividends that year.
At the end of 1914 smelting ceased for more than a year due to shortage of ore. Although 3200 tons of blister copper was produced in 1913, production fell to 1840 tons in 1914 and the workforce dwindled to only 40 men. For the second half of 1915 and early 1916 the smelter treated ore railed south from Mount Cuthbert. At the end of July 1916 the smelting plant at Selwyn was dismantled except for the flue chambers and stacks. A new furnace with a capacity of 500 tons per day was built, a large amount of second-hand equipment was obtained and the converters were increased in size.
After the enlarged furnace was commissioned in June 1917, continuing industrial unrest retarded production which amounted to only 1000 tons of copper that year. The point of contention was the efficiency of the new smelter which processed twice as much ore while employing fewer men. The company decided to close down the smelter in October and reduce the size of the furnace, the largest in Australia, from 6.5m to 5.5m. In the meantime the price of copper had almost doubled from 1916 due to wartime consumption of munitions.
The new furnace commenced on the 16th of January 1918 and 77,482 tons of ore were smelted yielding 3580 tons of blister copper which were sent to the Bowen refinery before export to Britain. Local coal and coke supply was a problem and materials were being sourced from the distant Bowen Colliery. The smelter had a good run for almost a year except for a strike in July and another in December, which caused Corbould to close down the plant until New Year. In 1919, following relaxation of wartime controls by the British Metal Corporation, the copper price plunged from about £110 per ton at the start of the year to £75 per ton in April, dashing the company's optimism regarding treatment of low grade ores. The smelter finally closed after two months operation and most employees were laid off.
For much of the period 1919 to 1922, Corbould was in England trying to raise capital to reorganise the company's operations but he failed and resigned from the company in 1922. The Mount Elliott Company took over the assets of the other companies on the Cloncurry field in the 1920s - Mount Cuthbert in 1925 and Kuridala in 1926. Mount Isa Mines bought the Mount Elliott plant and machinery, including the three smelters, in 1943 for £2,300, enabling them to start copper production in the middle of the Second World War. The Mount Elliott Company was finally liquidated in 1953.
In 1950 A.E. Powell took up the Mount Elliott Reward Claim at Selwyn and worked close to the old smelter buildings. An open cut mine commenced at Starra, south of Mount Elliott and Selwyn, in 1988 and is Australia's third largest copper producer producing copper-gold concentrates from flotation and gold bullion from carbon-in-leach processing.
Profitable copper-gold ore bodies were recently proved at depth beneath the Mount Elliott smelter and old underground workings by Cyprus Gold Australia Pty Ltd. These deposits were subsequently acquired by Arimco Mining Pty Ltd for underground development which commenced in July 1993. A decline tunnel portal, ore and overburden dumps now occupy a large area of the Maggie Creek valley south-west of the smelter which was formerly the site of early miner's camps.
The Old Selwyn Township:
In 1907, the first hotel, run by H. Williams, was opened at the site. The township was surveyed later, around 1910, by the Mines Department. The town was to be situated north of the mine and smelter operations adjacent the railway, about 1.5km distant. It took its name from the nearby Selwyn Ranges which were named, during Burke's expedition, after the Victorian Government Geologist, A.R. Selwyn. The town has also been known by the name of Mount Elliott, after the nearby mines and smelter.
Many of the residents either worked at the Mount Elliott Mine and Smelter or worked in the service industries which grew around the mining and smelting operations. Little documentation exists about the everyday life of the town's residents. Surrounding sheep and cattle stations, however, meant that meat was available cheaply and vegetables grown in the area were delivered to the township by horse and cart. Imported commodities were, however, expensive.
By 1910 the town had four hotels. There was also an aerated water manufacturer, three stores, four fruiterers, a butcher, baker, saddler, garage, police, hospital, banks, post office (officially from 1906 to 1928, then unofficially until 1975) and a railway station. There was even an orchestra of ten players in 1912. The population of Selwyn rose from 1000 in 1911 to 1500 in 1918, before gradually declining.
Source: Queensland Heritage Register.
I don't recall the exact circumstances but by 1998 a couple of the European Passenger Services 37/6 locomotives ended up on West Highland freight work.
37601, before the DRS years, passes the Fort William aluminium smelter ground frame on its way south with some of the produce of the smelter. The train would have left the smelter for Fort William station to run round before heading south.
Given that these 37/6 conversions were done with the intention of hauling the Nightstar sleeper trains up to the Channel Tunnel, running round the ingots train in Fort Bill station was probably the closest they ever got to revenue earning sleeper stock.
The Anaconda Smelter Stack is the tallest surviving masonry structure in the world., at 585ft/178m tall..
Built in 1918 as part of the Washoe Smelter of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company (ACM) at Anaconda, Montana.
Daybreak reveals the smelter complex is already working hard as the early passenger train forges through the gloom of valley, pounding up to the top mine of Shenbutong, on the Baiyin Non Ferrous Metals Mine Railway, Gansu Province, in central China. The company has bought new diesel locos, but steam still hangs in there, at least for the winter months when it's probably needed for heating the carriages. December 2012. © Photo - David Hill.