History of Mount Morgan Mine

History of Mount Morgan Mine

Report to Austral Archaeology Pty Ltd

Peter Bell Historical Research Pty Ltd

Adelaide

August 2002

Peter Bell • Mount Morgan Mine • 2002

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Introduction This report was commissioned by Austral Archaeology Pty Ltd to provide background material to assist the conservation and interpretation of the site of the Mount Morgan mine. It consists of a brief overview history of the mining operation, a chronology of events, a statement of heritage significance, a summary of historic themes and a bibliography. The historical overview does not give references, as the information it contains is of a broad general nature, and could be obtained from a number of secondary sources. The most helpful sources used were John Kerr's Gold, Copper and Oil, Geoffrey Blainey's The Rush that Never Ended, Ray Boyle's unpublished two-volume Cultural Heritage Study and Mount Morgan Limited publications. No research was done from primary sources such as company or Mines Department annual reports or newspapers. The history focuses on the physical development of the Mount Morgan mine site. It does not cover the town of Mount Morgan or the company's other operations at Port Kembla, Marmor, Many Peaks, Baralaba and elsewhere. A Note on Units of Measurement Imperial units of measurement have generally been used in the historical narrative of this report, as the feel of the information they convey is not necessarily retained in a simple mathematical conversion. If it is necessary to convert the old weights and measures used here, they are mostly very straightforward. An imperial ton and a metric tonne are almost exactly the same weight, and a mile is 1.6 kilometres. The ounce referred to in describing gold production is the Troy ounce of 31 grams, still in use to measure precious metals today. An ore grade described as about 1 ounce per ton would now be expressed as about 30g/tonne, or 30 parts per million (ppm). Converting money is more complicated, as its value varied over time. The advice commonly offered in notes of this kind that one pound equals two dollars is untrue and misleading; that was simply the conversion ratio on the day when decimal currency was introduced in 1966, not its value through time. The pound was worth far more than that throughout the last few centuries; in 1900 when the Mount Morgan mine was in its heyday, a one pound note bought goods which would cost nearly $100 to buy today. One way to estimate money values at a time in the past is to compare earnings for the same kind of work then and now. As a rough indication of the historic value of the pound, in 1900 a good wage for an unskilled worker was about £3 for a six day working week, or £150 a year. An ounce of gold was worth a little over £4, or roughly a week’s wages for a skilled worker.


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Mount Morgan Mine: A Brief History Mount Morgan in central Queensland was a remarkable mine in the context of Australian mining history. It was mined for almost a hundred years, and when extraction finished in 1981, it was by far the largest gold-producing mine in Australia at 7,500,000 ounces - roughly 250 tons - of gold. No mine in the heart of Western Australia's Golden Mile had produced much more than a third of that; the combined total of all 27 or so mines on the fabulous Garden Gully reef at Bendigo was less than two-thirds of it. Mount Morgan had also produced 360,000 tons of copper, making it the fourth-largest copper producer in Australia. What is most surprising about the richest gold mine in Australia is the modest town of Mount Morgan alongside it. Despite the wealth that was created by its workforce, this is no Bendigo or Kalgoorlie. The conventional idea that a mining boom will create a prosperous-looking settlement did not happen here; the profits from Mount Morgan's gold and copper were spent far away. While it is easy to apply superlatives to the mine's history, it was by no means a simple story. Mount Morgan had begun as a gold mine and ended as a copper mine. It had started treating high-grade oxidised ores and progressed to treating low-grade sulphide ores. It had outlived three companies and suffered fires, floods, strikes and terrible mining accidents. Its metallurgists had used the chlorination process, the cyanide process, the flotation process, blast furnaces, roasters, reverberatory furnaces and converters. They had tried nearly every technique in the world's mining textbooks, and then invented a few of their own to keep the mine in production for a century. During that time Mount Morgan had started as a mine on a mountain top, and ended as the deepest opencut in Australia. There were eight phases in the life of the Mount Morgan mine: 1882-1885 the rich shallow gold ore was worked by conventional methods and managed by

a private syndicate; 1886-1902 the first company upgraded the mine, introduced the chlorination process and

made huge profits from gold production; 1903-1912 the mine was converted to copper production from blast furnaces, but ran into

serious difficulties in the underground workings; 1913-1927 the company struggled against rising costs and falling production, ending in

strikes, a fire, and the closure of the mine; 1929-1938 the second company re-opened the mine on a radically revised basis, opencut

mining, using flotation and shipping concentrates to the USA for treatment;


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1939-1967 the Second World War forced the mine to smelt locally, concentrating on copper production from reverberatory furnaces;

1968-1981 the third company continued to concentrate on copper production from a flash smelter until mining ceased; and

1982-1990 a period of winding-up operations with gold production coming from re-treating tailings.

In 1854, while central Queensland was still part of New South Wales, the Leichhardt District was opened to pastoral settlement. The Archer brothers took up Gracemere on the flats of the Fitzroy River, and other graziers followed. The following year the port of Rockhampton was established near the river mouth. The experience of the southern colonies had shown that mining was a much quicker way of accumulating wealth than grazing, and mineral discoveries followed soon after settlement. In 1857 gold was discovered at Canoona, sparking off a wildly over-optimistic rush, which saw inexperienced miners flooding into a frontier township which had little infrastructure in existence. The resulting distress and disorder forced the colonial government to intervene by paying the return passages south for thousands of would-be diggers. Queensland became a separate colony in 1859 with the memory of this debacle souring its reputation in mining circles. But the truth was that Canoona was no duffer; 40,000 ounces of gold had been won there by 1860, and that was only the beginning. In the following years alluvial gold was discovered at a succession of other places in the Rockhampton hinterland: at Cawarral in 1863, Crocodile Creek, Ridgelands and Morinish in 1866, New Zealand Gully and Mount Wheeler in 1868 and Garibaldi in 1870. The whole region became alert to the presence of gold, and the business community of Rockhampton was fully aware of the investment possibilities of both pastoralism and mining. In 1867 the Queensland government recognised the prosperity of the region by building the colony's second railway inland from Rockhampton, but as its purpose was mainly political, it only went thirty miles to Westwood and stopped there for the next few years. Twenty-five miles south of Rockhampton, in a range of rugged hills around the headwaters of the Dee River, was a peak which local people called Ironstone Mountain. The ironstone which capped it would have been of great interest to geologists, who might have recognised it as the decomposed end-product of a highly mineralised and potentially gold-bearing deposit of ferrous and cuprous sulphides. When such a deposit is exposed to the weather for millions of years, the oxidised products of both the copper and the sulphur are soluble and wash away, leaving only an insoluble mass of ferric oxide - common rust - in position, dotted with microscopic specks of gold. But there were no geologists in the Dee Valley to interpret this and understand what might lie beneath, so 28 years went by between settlement of the


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district and recognition of the ore deposit. Local legend says that prospectors dollied small samples of gold from Ironstone Mountain in the 1870s. This is quite likely, but the tiny amounts would have caused no interest in a district with half a dozen goldfields already in production. Mining interest in central Queensland was waning as discoveries further north attracted gold miners to richer places like the Palmer River and Charters Towers. By 1882 the specks of gold on Ironstone Mountain became known to Frederick Morgan and his brothers Ned and Tom, prominent Rockhampton business people with investments in mining. (Ned Morgan afterwards claimed he had personally discovered the gold there, but this is highly unlikely.) They assayed samples and found them very encouraging, although very difficult to treat by the conventional local methods of simply crushing the ore in a stamp battery and amalgamating the gold on mercury plates. Morgan family members took up an extended claim 3,000 feet long by 400 feet wide - about ten hectares in area - across the orebody. (They were entitled both to reward claims as the discoverers, and to extended claims because the Dee River was known to be a poor mining district.) They also bought the nearby grazing property freehold and controlled the whole mineralised area. This was the first major event defining Mount Morgan's future, for it meant that, in contrast to every other major mining field in Australia such as Broken Hill, Mount Lyell or Kalgoorlie, all decisions from the outset would be made in one boardroom. Next the brothers formed a syndicate - not at this stage a registered company - with William Knox D'Arcy, Thomas and Walter Hall and William Pattison of Rockhampton, and raised £2,000 to erect a ten-stamp mill beside the Dee River by late 1882. From this time, the Morgan brothers encouraged local people to refer to the Ironstone Mountain as Mount Morgan. Within months, the first mill was replaced by a larger one, operating by 1883. The syndicate had quickly discovered two essential truths about the Mount Morgan ore: it was very rich, but its treatment was very difficult, and would necessitate constant changes in methods throughout the life of the mine. During 1883 the Mount Morgan mine was in production, at first simply quarrying away the surface of the outcrop, and sliding ore down a chute to the stamp mill below. A third essential truth about the mine was that it was to be chronically short of water. A series of dams had been built to supply the mill, but water remained a problem in summer and a much bigger dam with a capacity of eight million gallons (36 megalitres) was built in 1884. At this stage in its life the mine looked much the same as a dozen other hopeful small mines around the district, but it was producing a lot more gold. It was rumoured in Rockhampton that the mine was producing a thousand ounces of gold each week. These rumours produced a flurry of litigation over the next few years, as others contested the validity of the syndicate's claims. In 1883 the Crocodile Goldfield was extended to take in Mount Morgan, and the


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syndicate replaced its claims with more secure Gold Mining Leases. Some of the Mount Morgan ore was breath-takingly rich in gold, but it was frustratingly difficult to treat because the iron oxide interfered with the amalgamation process, and assays showed that perhaps half the gold was being lost in the tailings. Even so, the half that was being sent to the bank was more than most gold miners had ever dreamed of producing. If the estimate of a thousand ounces per week was anywhere near true, Mount Morgan was already one of the richest gold mines in Australia. There was conflict among the partners about the way the mine should go. Essentially the Morgans were content to mine conservatively and cheaply, enjoying the short-term returns they were extracting from the ore by conventional methods. They may also have had doubts about how long such a rich mine could last; it was well known that the top of an orebody has usually been enriched by millions of years of erosion, and the gold content often drops abruptly as the mine goes deeper. The others, especially D'Arcy, wanted to push the mine to its full potential, and that meant investing further capital into experimenting with more sophisticated ore treatment technology. The disagreement was resolved by a series of deals in which D'Arcy bought out the Morgan family members' shares and land holdings, paying a steep total of about £90,000. By the end of 1884 the Morgans were out of the syndicate, and D'Arcy, the Halls and Pattison controlled the mine. (The Morgans no doubt thought they had made an excellent return on their investment of about £1,000 over two years, but they were unaware that five years later £90,000 worth of gold would be coming out of the mine every month.) This was the second major event defining Mount Morgan's future, for it committed the mine to the strategic path of finding the technology to maximise production. That would remain the policy of three companies over the next hundred years. With courtroom challenges to their tenure still going on, D'Arcy knew he had to get the mine on a stronger legal footing. In October 1886 the partners registered the Mount Morgan Gold Mining Company Limited, floated with one million £1 shares. The company began paying 25% dividends immediately, and shares were trading for £10 within a year, and £15 a few months later. The capital was needed because the company had embarked on the first technical overhaul of ore treatment, calling in experts James Newbery and Claude Vautin in 1885 to advise on their chlorination method of gold extraction. Over the years the company experimented with a number of chlorination techniques: the Newbery-Vautin process, the Mears process and the Thies process, eventually settling on a method developed locally by mine manager Wesley Hall and metallurgist George Richard, often called the Hall-Richard process. Simultaneously, chlorination was being adopted further north on the Ravenswood and Charters Towers goldfields, where millers were struggling to extract gold from difficult


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sulphide ores. At this stage sulphides were not a problem at Mount Morgan; the gold was remarkably pure, simply alloyed with a little copper, finely divided and iron stained, and the chlorination process was much more successful there. All the chlorination processes were broadly similar: the ore was crushed finely, concentrated and heated, then exposed to chlorine generated by the reaction of calcium chloride with sulphuric acid. The gold, inert in most circumstances, formed a chloride which could either be filtered through activated carbon or precipitated from solution by the addition of ferrous sulphate, and the resulting sludge smelted. The different processes varied in their details: the temperature and pressure of the chamber, whether the concentrate was wet or dry, whether it was placed into the acid reaction chamber or separately exposed to the generated chlorine gas, whether the mixture was still or agitated. The first small chlorination plant, known as the Lower Works, was in production by 1886, and a larger plant known as the Upper Works by 1888, replacing the old mill. They boosted gold production dramatically, coinciding with the peak of trading excitement in the company's shares. In reality the efficiency of the extraction processes hardly mattered, because the amount of gold coming out of the plant was phenomenal. In an industry where by a rough rule of thumb, an ounce of gold per ton of ore was considered a good grade, Mount Morgan was mining patches of ore that assayed 40 or 50 ounces to the ton. The average grade put through the mill in 1889 was 4.3 ounces to the ton. By that year the company had paid its shareholders a million pounds in dividends. D'Arcy had gone home to England to spend his money, and to make a second fortune in Persian Gulf oil. Mount Morgan was not the first Australian company to pay a million in dividends - the Moonta copper mine in South Australia had passed that figure just a few years before - but Moonta had been in production nearly 30 years, whereas the Mount Morgan company was less than three years old. Despite the generous payments to shareholders, the company was also making good use of its profits by investing in long-term mine development. Assets such as an electric power plant and a large brickworks were essential to the running of the mine, although they came only after extraction had been going on for ten years. The mine's mountain-top site caused perennial difficulties in both water supply and transport. The first of these problems was tackled by building two even larger dams, Numbers 5 and 6, in 1888 and 1895. The solution to the second came more slowly, after years of argument between the state government, the town council and the company, when a branch railway was built over the range from the government line at Kabra, reaching Mount Morgan in 1898. The third problem imposed by the site was lack of level space, but for this there was no solution; every development on the mine site for the next eighty years would be cramped onto benches excavated into steep slopes. In 1898 the most ambitious treatment plant yet - the West Works - opened, using the Hall-


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Richard process, the culmination of thirteen years of local experimentation with chlorination. It brought Mount Morgan to international attention as a metallurgical innovator. The development of the mine workings had also moved on from the hilltop quarry stage, and underground extraction was being done from shafts and adits. But the workings were a mess, having simply grown opportunistically over time. Even after nearly twenty years of mining, the directors had little idea of the shape of the orebody. In 1897 the company began 'glory-holing'; sending ore from surface workings down chutes or passes into the underground workings to be trucked out through adits, but their mining tactics still simply involved pursuing rich patches in the orebody. No-one yet understood its geological origins, and there was no plan for the future development of the mine. The company's improvements no doubt seemed revolutionary to shareholders at the time, but much greater changes in mining and treatment methods would be imposed by the orebody itself. While the early years of the mine could be summed up as quarrying rich ore and treating it cheaply, both were becoming more difficult; as the mine went deeper the ore was becoming less rich, and treatment was becoming more costly. At first the company had been extracting the oxidised and enriched ore close to the surface, and enjoying the benefits of millions of years of erosion. But by the late 1890s as the mine went deeper, the character of the orebody was changing. For a start it contained less gold. With the amazing ore grades of the early years, the mine's production had soared to nearly 300,000 ounces or ten tons of gold in 1889: almost half of Queensland's total gold production in that year. By 1898 when the railway opened, average grade had dropped to one ounce per ton; still highly attractive, but much less profitable than earlier levels. More important, the ore was changing in composition. Below the oxidised zone, the ore was composed of sulphides, and the copper content was steadily increasing. As early as 1888, the company had installed a by-product sulphuric acid plant, utilising the sulphur in the ore to supply the chlorinating vats. As more and more of the ore coming out was in the form of sulphides, they were blended with oxidised ores to simplify treatment, but in 1899, the Mundic Works was built specifically to deal with the changing orebody. (To miners, the words sulphide, mundic and pyrite were interchangeable.) In both the West Works and the Mundic Works, ores were roasted before treatment to burn off the sulphides. By 1900, most of the small mines of the Rockhampton district had closed, and the Mount Morgan Goldfield was proclaimed in belated recognition of the importance of the largest mine in the region. In one way the name change was inappropriate, for Mount Morgan was about to cease being primarily a gold mine at all. In the early twentieth century the copper price was booming, and as the copper content of the ore steadily increased, it changed in the directors'


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minds from being a metallurgical nuisance into an economic asset. In 1903, over twenty years after mining began, the company finally brought in diamond drills to explore the orebody and discover the shape and size of the resource they were mining. Innovation continued. Wood-burning gas producers harvested the local forests to provide cheaper fuel than imported coal. As the underground workings extended, there were experiments in economising by using large open stopes. Pig-stye timbering, pioneered in Charters Towers twenty years before, was used to support the roof, but the stable ground proved to be very accommodating, and by 1904 a local method evolved of using 'flat-back chambers' or broad horizontal stopes held up by widely-spaced pig-styes. The diamond drills were revealing deep deposits of commercially viable copper ore, and selected pockets were mined and put through experimental smelting processes to extract their copper. The results were extremely encouraging, and in 1906 Mount Morgan underwent another profound departure, when the first waterjacket blast furnace was built and copper production commenced. Gold output continued, but this was the third major event defining Mount Morgan's future, for it diversified the mine into production of both gold and copper for the rest of its life. The transition was signalled appropriately on the mine skyline, for the furnace flue ran up to an enormous brick chimney, known ever since as the Big Stack, which would dominate the mine site throughout the following decades. By 1907 there were three blast furnaces and two converters in production, and Mount Morgan was already among the significant copper producers of Australia. That year saw the price of copper plunge on the London market, ending the boom which had attracted the directors to base metal production, but the commitment to copper remained, and the number of smelters steadily increased, with five blast furnaces in production by 1911, and eight in 1914. The underground workings were expanding steadily, and in 1908 the Linda Shaft was sunk as a decline to improve access to the working areas. It would be the principal Man and Supply shaft for the next fifty years. Like most structures on the mine, the shaft headframe was built of timber, as experience had shown that steel corroded rapidly in contact with Mount Morgan's acidic copper sulphide ore. In September 1908 there was a major collapse in one of the underground chambers, when a slab of roof weighing over 1,000 tons fell without warning, killing seven miners. The unprecedented event was still fresh in everyone's minds when in November an even larger fall killed another five miners. There were numerous smaller falls; in all, 14 miners were killed by roof falls in three months. An enquiry found that the timbering methods were inadequate, and that management and workforce had become complacent about monitoring the state of the ground. There was a transition to the safer but more expensive square-set timbering


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method used at Broken Hill, and the worst of the falls ceased, although shifting ground would plague underground operations for 20 years. In 1909 the Linda Memorial was erected in the Mount Morgan cemetery to commemorate the 26 miners who had died in the mine since 1894, but a more substantial monument was created the following year, when the new Mines Regulation Act stiffened up mining companies' responsibility for their workers' safety. Copper was now providing more of the company's profits than gold, and the great age of chlorinating was over. In 1907 as the copper smelters came on line, the Lower Works chlorination plant closed, then in 1910 the West Works plant, and finally in 1912 the Mundic Works closed. The stench of chlorine no longer played a part in daily life in Mount Morgan as it had for the past generation. But the stench of sulphur dioxide would become stronger. As the mine went deeper, the ore grade continued to drop, and the sulphide content progressively increased. In 1913 Dwight & Lloyd Roasters were installed to treat copper sulphide before milling, and a Huntington Heberlein plant was added two years later. In 1914 a completely new copper concentration plant - to be known as No. 1 Mill - went up on the site of the Mundic Works, introducing flotation into the treatment process. Mount Morgan was now predominantly a copper mine rather than a gold mine, and in 1915 it produced 15,000 tons of copper: far more than any mine in Australia had ever produced in a year. The First World War had a complex effect on copper mines the world over. Its initial impact in 1914 was to disrupt shipping and markets - Germany had been a major customer of Mount Morgan copper - bringing chaos and depression. Then as the demand for copper and brass to manufacture munitions kicked in, the price of copper rose steadily to reach its highest price ever in 1916. The copper industry boomed while the battle of the Somme was raging. Demand fell again towards the end of the war, and the market was glutted because of over-production encouraged by the boom, and government stockpiling. The copper price fell steadily in the early 1920s to below a third of the 1916 peak, and would not rise significantly until the 1940s. Faced with these economic circumstances, the 1920s were a grim time in Mount Morgan. There was no expenditure on mine development, simply an emphasis on keeping costs down. The company cut wages by 20% in 1920, bringing on a strike which lasted nearly a year. The township dwindled in population. A huge rock slide in 1924 greatly disrupted mining, although without loss of life. In 1925 there was a another more ugly strike, and while it was underway a serious fire broke out in the underground workings. The mine was flooded to extinguish it and, as the company had no funds to reinstate the mine, underground operations had to be abandoned. Production continued from the opencut, but the mine was running at a loss with no hope of improvement in sight. In July 1927 the Mount Morgan Gold Mining Company was


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liquidated and the mine ceased operations. After 45 years of mining, the Mount Morgan story appeared to be over. At the time the mine closed, diamond drilling had identified nearly eight million tons of ore reserves, containing over 100,000 tons of copper and nearly 2,000,000 ounces of gold. The problem was to find a way of extracting and treating it, given the hopeless state of the workings. The old company had investigated large-scale opencut working, but its initial cost had deterred them. Now a new group headed by Adam Boyd, who had been Superintendent under the old company, did the figures again. In July 1929 they registered a new company, Mount Morgan Limited, which bought the old company's assets for £70,000. The new company knew they had a large asset but a depressed market; the challenge facing them was to find ways to operate on a large scale at the lowest possible cost. In the short term they did no mining, but extracted copper metal at very little cost by pumping water from the mine and precipitating the dissolved copper on to scrap iron. This had been practised on a small scale for years, but for the next two years it became Mount Morgan's only source of income. The revival of Mount Morgan was achieved by eliminating two major costs of the old company's operations: smelting and underground mining. During 1931, tests were undertaken to establish the most efficient ways of milling and concentrating ores from the opencut, and in 1932 production resumed. Extraction was done entirely by opencut operations, using steam shovels and motor trucks. For the first time mining operations were not dictated by the pursuit of rich patches; the strategy was to slowly and systematically extract the entire economic orebody. The ore was crushed and put through a highly efficient flotation process in the new No. 1 Flotation Plant which achieved a concentration ratio of 20:1, that is it successfully discarded 95% of the mined ore as waste. This efficiency made it economical to ship the concentrate for treatment overseas, and Mount Morgan's gold/copper concentrate was shipped from Rockhampton to the American Smelting and Refining Company's smelters at Tacoma, Washington. (Asarco had recently bought a 52% interest in Queensland's other major mining company, Mount Isa Mines.) Mount Morgan was assisted by developments in the wider economy. The Queensland government was anxious for the mining industry to survive the Great Depression, and came to the company's assistance with loans to help start up. The depreciation of the Australian pound made it more profitable to sell minerals overseas. And, while the price of copper was still depressed, the price of gold had been floated in 1931, and was rising rapidly from its old fixed value of £4 per ounce towards £8; by 1949 it would reach £16. These combined effects allowed the company to declare a profit of £30,000 in 1933, and shareholders received their


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first dividend since 1920. This rapid return to viability made it possible to finance improvements to the plant. In 1933 a Ball Mill was added to allow finer grinding, and in 1935 there was major reconstruction of the treatment works, with an Oxide Mill (No. 2 Mill) and cyanide plant added to the flow diagram. By 1938, it was obvious that another war was imminent, and that hostilities between Japan and the USA would probably prevent trans-Pacific trade. The company set about making Mount Morgan independent of the Tacoma smelters by restoring a local smelting capacity. This involved yet another major reconstruction of the mine's treatment operations, with the erection of Edwards roasters, a reverberatory furnace and converters, and smelting at Mount Morgan resumed in February 1939. The reverberatory furnace was built on the site of the old blast furnaces. During the course of the Second World War the original furnace was extended in length and a second reverberatory was built, while more roasters and a bigger flotation plant were added. The cyanide plant closed down in 1944. The price of copper rose again during the Second World War, and the company tried to increase production, but struggled with shortages of fuel and labour. The Federal government undertook a review of base metal production, and in 1943 a rationalisation of copper production was enforced by the Controller of Mineral Production. Some mines were forced to close down, while others received government subsidies to encourage production; unfortunately Mount Morgan missed out on this assistance, but began smelting copper ore from the Mount Chalmers mine. The company pressed for a copper refinery on the central Queensland coalfields, but Federal policy was to centralise copper refining at Port Kembla. In Queensland the big winner of wartime restructuring was Mount Isa Mines, which, although it did not even have a smelter, was instructed to begin producing copper, and has gone on to become by far the largest copper producer in Australian history. Mount Morgan continued to prosper through the post-war period. Gold was not particularly profitable, but copper prices remained high, and were supplemented by a government bounty and tax concessions for the mining industry. Once machinery and fuel became available again, the opencut was pushed down to ever-greater depths, below 800 feet (240m) by the early 1950s. The ore grades were only a fraction of what they had been in the mine's early years, but the plant's scale of operations was enormous, and through-put was more important than ore quality in determining production. Copper output was 6,000 tons or more per annum, and the company's dividends were usually 30%. But however comfortable conditions were, the end of mining was plainly visible in the ever-diminishing ore grade coming out of the ever-deepening hole. There would inevitably come a time when it would no longer pay to bring the ore to the surface, and at that point the mine must close.


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If the company was to survive, it had to diversify its operations beyond the Mount Morgan opencut. In 1967 the company recommended shareholders accept a friendly takeover offer from Peko-Wallsend Investments Ltd, a company whose interests already extended to gold mining in the Northern Territory, uranium mining in north-western Queensland, coal mining in New South Wales, and would expand into scheelite, mineral sands and iron ore. The takeover went ahead in 1968; Mount Morgan Ltd retained its name, but was now a subsidiary of the re-named Peko-Wallsend Ltd. The first fruit of the takeover came when Mount Morgan began treating copper concentrates from Peko's mines at Tennant Creek. But in the next few years the additional capital made available by the much larger company was put into developments aimed at keeping production costs down, and extending the life of the Mount Morgan mine. The opencut was redeveloped to improve truck haulage, and equipped with a new generation of excavating machinery and ore trucks. On the surface, completely new ore crushing and grinding machinery was installed in 1971. The most daring development was the decision to move to a completely new smelting technology. The mine had been through two smelting phases, first with blast furnaces and later using reverberatories, which had changed very little in design since the nineteenth century. In 1972 Mount Morgan became the first mine in Australia to install a Flash Smelter developed by the Outokumpu Company of Finland. It was a radical departure from any earlier smelting technique; finely powdered ore concentrate, flux and fuel were sprayed into a combustion chamber where they reacted almost explosively. There was no preliminary roasting, as the sulphur in the ore became part of the furnace fuel. Naturally there were extended teething problems with the new furnace, and a long period of reduced production before it was running smoothly. In 1975 copper production briefly soared to its highest-ever figure of nearly 10,000 tons. But there were a number of obstacles facing the company. The down-time associated with the new smelter was followed by abnormal rains flooding the opencut, and then a large rock-slide which made much of the orebody inaccessible. Mount Morgan had defeated worse problems in the past, but in the present economic circumstances every additional burden was a threat to the mine's viability. The copper price was falling, and the ore from deep in the mine was showing traces of zinc: the bane of the copper metallurgist. In 1976 the company began laying off employees. It was the beginning of the end for Mount Morgan. Mining continued on a lower scale, with copper and gold production dropping every year throughout the late 1970s. Some ore was again coming in from the Mount Chalmers mine for treatment. The dramatic rise in the price of gold in 1979 came too late to make a difference.


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Finally Mount Morgan reached that crucial moment in the life of every mining operation, when the margin between the falling mineral value of the ore is too close to the cost of extracting it for the company to make a profit. On 31 July 1981 mining ceased. By that time, the opencut was over 1,000 feet (300m) deep, nearly down to sea level. The end of mining did not immediately mean the end of operations, but since 1981 work on site at Mount Morgan has consisted of realising assets and winding up. The Mill went on treating Mount Chalmers ore for another year, and the Flash Smelter remained in operation until 1984, treating stockpiled concentrates. A vast quantity of tailings with a small gold content still remained on site from the decades of mining, and in 1982 a Carbon in Pulp Cyanide Plant was built to re-treat these. An estimated 37 million tons of tailings with a gold content of perhaps one gram per ton meant there were 37 tons of gold in the tailings - over a million ounces - more than the total resource that most Australian goldfields ever had. Tailings re-treatment continued until 1990, when all operations on the Mount Morgan mine site ceased. There had already been extensive demolition of the milling plant, smelter and other buildings as they became disused as surface operations progressively would down during the 1980s. In November 1990 the remaining surface plant was auctioned and everything of commercial value was removed from the site soon afterward.


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Mount Morgan Mine: Chronology of Events 1854 Leichhardt District opened to pastoral settlement 1855 Port of Rockhampton established 1857 Gold discovered at Canoona 1863 Gold discovered at Cawarral 1866 Gold discovered at Crocodile Creek 1867 Rockhampton-Westwood railway opened 1882 Mount Morgan gold deposit discovered Morgan brothers take up leases and freehold 1883 Mining commenced and stamp mill in production Three small dams built 1884 D'Arcy buys out Morgan interest in company Number 4 dam, 8 million gallons 1886 Mount Morgan Gold Mining Company registered Lower Works (Mears Chlorination process) in production 1888 Upper Works (Mears Chlorination process) in production Sulphuric acid works in production Number 5 dam, 14 million gallons 1889 Ore grade 4.3 oz/ton Company paid £1.1 million in dividends 1895 Number 6 dam Second brickworks built 1897 Commencement of 'glory-holing' Electric Light Works (power station) in service Kabra-Mount Morgan railway construction commenced 1898 West Works (Hall-Richard chlorination process) in production Railway opened Ore grade 1 oz/ton Third brickworks built 1899 Mundic Works in production 1900 Mount Morgan Goldfield proclaimed 1903 Diamond drilling of orebody Copper production commenced 1904 Experimental copper smelting Gas producers installed Flat-back chambers in use 1906 First waterjacket blast furnace Big Stack built


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1907 Three blast furnaces and converters in production Lower Works chlorination plant closed 1908 Linda Shaft sunk Major underground roof falls - 14 miners killed 1909 Linda Memorial erected 1910 West Works chlorination plant closed 1911 Five blast furnaces in production 1912 Mundic Works chlorination plant closed 1913 Dwight & Lloyd Roasters installed 1914 Concentration plant (No. 1 Mill) built on Mundic Works site Eight blast furnaces in production Basic liners in converters 1915 Huntington-Heberlein plant installed 1925 Fire in underground workings Miners strike 1927 Mine closed Mount Morgan Gold Mining Company liquidated 1929 Mount Morgan Ltd registered Cementation plant in production 1931 Test milling and flotation of copper and gold 1932 Opencut operation began Milling operations re-commenced - concentrate shipped to Tacoma No. 1 Flotation Plant in production 1933 Ball Mill in production 1935 Major reconstruction of treatment works 1936 Oxide mill (No. 2 Mill) and cyanide plant built 1939 Edwards roasters, reverberatory furnace and converter in production Reverberatory furnace (No. 1) built on blast furnace site 1940 Furnace extended in length 1941 New winder on Linda Shaft 1942 Number 3 roaster added 1944 Number 2 reverberatory furnace added Cyanide plant closed Flotation Plant added to Oxide Mill (No. 2 Mill) & cyanide plant 1950 Secondary Crushing Plant built 1968 Peko Wallsend Investments Ltd bought Mount Morgan Ltd Mount Morgan treating copper concentrates from Tennant Creek 1971 New Primary Crusher built 1972 Flash smelter replaced No. 1 reverberatory furnace


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1981 Mining ceased No. 1 Mill treating Mount Chalmers ore 1982 Tailings re-treated in Carbon in Pulp Cyanide plant No. 1 Mill closed 1984 Flash smelter ceased operation 1990 Tailings re-treatment ceased Surface plant auctioned


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Mount Morgan Mine: Statement of Heritage Value The following provides both an extended and concise statement of heritage value for Mount Morgan Mine, treating the whole mine site as a single place. The statement is expressed in terms of the criteria for the entry of a place in the Queensland Heritage Register which are set out in Section 23 (1) of the Queensland Heritage Act 1992 (as amended 1995). Mount Morgan Mine is a place of cultural heritage significance and meets the following criteria: (a) It is important in demonstrating the evolution or pattern of Queensland’s history

Mount Morgan was arguably the most important single mine in Queensland history, and provides clear physical evidence of this importance and its development over a century. The development of the mine, its technology and mining structures over time can be read clearly in the site today. Mount Morgan is particularly notable historically for its long life and ingenuity in treating its slowly-deteriorating ores, and its consequent dependence on innovative technology. The evolution of mining practices over time and the many phases of mining and mineral treatment are demonstrated with remarkable clarity in the existing fabric.

(b) It demonstrates rare, uncommon or endangered aspects of Queensland’s cultural

heritage

Mount Morgan has rare qualities because of its sheer scale and wealth which transcended all other mines in Queensland, and because of the unusual range of mineral treatment processes which were practised there, evidence of which still survives.

(c) It has potential to yield information that will contribute to an understanding of

Queensland’s history

The Mount Morgan Mine constitutes physical evidence which has the potential to provide valuable information on late nineteenth and early twentieth century industry and employment practices in Queensland. The mine site has a number of places with a high potential for archaeological investigation.

(d) It is important in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a particular class

of cultural places

There are numerous nineteenth historic mine sites in Queensland, but the scale and complexity of Mount Morgan raise it out of the ordinary to make it an outstanding representative of sites of this type.


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(f) It is important in demonstrating a high degree of creative or technical achievement at a particular period

Although much altered, the mine site still demonstrates the remarkable legacy of Mount Morgan’s place in Queensland’s mining history at the forefront of technological innovation, including the early adoption of chlorination and flotation in particular, the use of large scale opencut mining, and the first Australian use of flash roasting.

(h) It has a special association with the life or work of a particular person, group or

organisation of importance in Queensland’s history

Mount Morgan is associated with the life and work of a variety of historical figures such as William Knox D'Arcy, Walter and Eliza Hall, Wesley Hall and George Richard, Adam Boyd, Glenister Sheil and Eric Campbell.

The above is summarized into the following Statement of Heritage Value:

The Mount Morgan Mine is of heritage value as the single richest gold mine in Australia, as a premier example of practices in both the gold and copper industries, and for the physical legacy of its complex and innovative history of mining technology. It is of great value for its representation of a wide range of mining technologies, evidenced by its intact and ruinous structures and mining landscape, with elements surviving from the whole period of mining between 1882 and 1981. In addition, the town is significant for its association with a number of historical figures and events, most notably William Knox D'Arcy and the rise and fall of the Mount Morgan Gold Mining Company.


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Mount Morgan Mine: Principal Historic Themes • The Cinderella Mine - undiscovered for 28 years after settlement

• The superlatives - the greatest gold mine in Australian history; the deepest opencut; the

fourth-largest copper mine (in its day) • The richness - early ore grades of 45oz/ton; the dividends; the share boom

• The difficulties - terrain; water shortage; intractable ore; rock falls; fire; strikes

• The scale - the opencut over a thousand feet deep

• The long life - mined for 99 years

• The diversity - a gold mine and a copper mine; a rich mine and a poor mine

• The technological innovation - experiments in chlorination; large-scale opencut

extraction; exporting concentrates for smelting in USA; first flash smelter in Australia

• The geology - complex and misunderstood; isolated; unique in Australia

• Where the profits were spent - William Knox D'Arcy, conspicuous consumption, Anglo-

Persian oil and British Petroleum; Walter Hall, philanthropy and medical research, the

Walter & Eliza Hall Institute


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Mount Morgan Mine: Bibliography Abell, L.M., 'Reverberatory Smelting Plant, Mount Morgan', Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Proceedings, New Series No. 115, 1939, pp. 345- Adam, J., 'Mont d'Or, the story of Mount Morgan', in Rydge's Business Journal, Sydney, July 1949, pp. 700, 702–703 Allom Lovell Marquis-Kyle, Mount Morgan Mine: an Appraisal of Significance, unpublished report to Perilya Mines NL, 1994 Barker, E.E., Report upon the Advisability of Operating the Mine of Mount Morgan Gold Mining Co. Ltd by Open Cut Methods, Mount Morgan Limited, Mount Morgan, 1927 Besley, Robyn, 'Mount Morgan — the Mountain of Gold', in Queensland Government Mining Journal, vol. 78, no. 912, October 1977, pp. 482–85 Blainey, Geoffrey, The Rush that Never Ended: a history of Australian mining, Melbourne University Press, 1963 Bohm, H.S., 'Refining Bullion at Mount Morgan, Queensland', Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers Proceedings 7, No. 1, 1910, pp. 53-68 Boyd, A.A., 'A History of Mount Morgan', Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Proceedings, New Series No. 115, 1939, pp. 247-270 Boyle, Ray, A Study of the Management and Growth Patterns of Mount Morgan Limited 1929-1950, MA thesis, Central Queensland University, 1995 Boyle, Ray, 'Mount Morgan's Mining Heritage: a model for the future?', in Denis Cryle, Grahame Griffin & Dani Stehlik (eds), Futures for Central Queensland, Central Queensland University, Rockhampton, 1996 Boyle, Ray, A Study of the Cultural and Heritage Significance of Selected Buildings and Structures at the Mount Morgan Mine (2 vols), report to Department of Environment and Heritage, 1999 Cameron, J. McD., Report on the Gold Mines of Mount Morgan, Bulletin, Rockhampton, 1887 Carment, David and McDonald, Lorna, 'The City of Gold: Rockhampton in 1888', in Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. 70, no. 2, October, 1984, pp. 75–87 Chardon, N. and Golding, F. (eds), Centenary of the Town of Mount Morgan 1882–1982, Mount Morgan Historical Society, Mount Morgan, 1982 Christmas, A. & Cook, W., A Brief History of Mount Morgan, leaflet 1996 Curtis, R. Emerson, with photographs by Lauwrence le Guay, 'The Wealth of Mount Morgan', in Walkabout, March 1949, pp. 25–28 Darbyshire, John and Sayers, C.E., Old Gold Towns of Queensland, Rigby, Adelaide, 1973


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de Havilland, D.W., Gold and Ghosts: A Prospectors guide to metal detecting and history of the Australian Goldfields, Volume 3 - Queensland Central and Southern Districts, Hesperian Press, Western Australia, 1987 Dick, W.H., The Mountain of Gold, Woodcock and Powell, Brisbane, 1889 The Discovery and History of Mount Morgan, Mount Morgan Historical Museum Inc, no date Dunn, E.J., 'The Mount Morgan Gold Mine', in Royal Society of Victoria Proceedings, 1904, pp. 341–355 Dunstan, Benjamin, Report on some Mount Morgan Mines, Geological Survey of Queensland Publication 161, Brisbane, 1901 Dunstan, Benjamin, Queensland Mineral Index and Guide, Geological Survey of Queensland Publication 241, Brisbane, 1913 Edwards, A.B., 'The Copper Deposits of Australia', Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Proceedings (New Series) No. 130, 1943, pp. 105-171 Ellis, M.H., 'Mount Morgan', in Bulletin, 30 November 1960, pp. 32–34 Elmslie, C.T., Mining in Queensland: a descriptive account of the principal gold mines of queensland with survey plans of the principal goldfields, Henry Adlard, London, 1902 Gistitan, C. and Boyle, R.F., 'Golden Mount: central Queensland's first triumph', in National Conference Publication (Institution of Engineers, Australia), no. 90/16, 1990, pp. 99–103 Golding, F.L., 'An Old Mining Town in Queensland: Mount Morgan', in Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, vol. 10, no. 3, 1977–1978, pp. 75–86 Griffin, Grahame, Mining the past: the Mount Morgan photographic archive and the uses of photography, Nathan, 1990 Holliday, Michael (ed.), 'Queensland's Historic Gold Mountain Closes', in Queensland Government Mining Journal, vol. 91, no. 1068, November 1990, pp. 468–69 Humphreys, C.H., 'West Works - Mount Morgan Chlorination', Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers Proceedings 6, No. 11, 1910, pp. 199-210 Hungerford, T.A.G., 'Queensland's Gold and Copper Bonanza', in National Development,, Canberra, Department of National Development, December 1953, pp.16–23 Ivimey, A.J., Mining and Descriptive Queensland: or travels through the Queensland Gold Fields, Brisbane, 1889 Ivimey, A.J., Rockhampton and Mount Morgan, Davison and Metcalf, Brisbane, 1988 Jack, Robert Logan, The Mount Morgan Gold Deposits, Geological Survey of Queensland Publication 17, Brisbane, 1884


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Jack, Robert Logan, Second Report on the Mount Morgan Gold Deposits, Geological Survey of Queensland Publication 47, Brisbane, 1888 Jack, Robert Logan, Third Report on the Mount Morgan Gold Deposits, Geological Survey of Queensland Publication 83, Brisbane, 1892 Jack, Robert Logan, Mount Morgan and Other Mines in the Crocodile Goldfield, Geological Survey of Queensland Publication 132, Brisbane, 1898 Johnstone, John, Mount Morgan Mine Heritage Report, report to Department of Mines and Energy, 1991 Jones, R.R., Gold mining in Central Queensland and the Mount Morgan Mine, Rockhampton, 1913 Kerr, John D., Mount Morgan: gold, copper and oil, J.D. and R.S. Kerr with Peko Wallsend Ltd, St Lucia, 1982 Lees, William, The Goldfields of Queensland: Mount Morgan, Rockhampton and Clermont 1858–1899, Outridge Printing Company, Brisbane, 1899 Lennon, B.W., 'The Sulphide Ore Treatment Plant at Mount Morgan', Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Proceedings (New Series) No. 115, 1939, p. 335 McDonald, Lorna, Rockhampton: a history of city and district, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1981 'Mount Morgan', in National Trust of Queensland Journal, vol. 5, no. 1, May 1981, pp. 2–4 The Mount Morgan Experience, Queensland Heritage Trails Network leaflet, 2001 Mount Morgan Limited, A History of Mount Morgan Mine and Description of its Geological Formations, with Plans Showing Past and Present Workings and Ore Reserves, Mount Morgan Limited, Brisbane, 1945 Mount Morgan Limited, An Account of the Mine and Works of Mount Morgan Limited at Mount Morgan, Mount Morgan Limited, Brisbane, 1950 Mount Morgan Mine: Rehabilitation Planning Workshop Proceedings, Department of Mines and Energy, 2000 Mount Morgan Mine Site Conservation Plan, report, no details, 1990? Mount Morgan: the field and machinery by the special correspondent of Engineering, Bulletin Office, Rockhampton, 1892 'Mount Morgan's Progress During Year', in Chemical Engineering and Mining Review, Melbourne, Tait Publishing Company, February 1954, pp. 191–95 Muller, H.B., Guide to the Operations of Mount Morgan Limited, Mount Morgan Limited, Mount Morgan, 1960


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Murray, H.M., 'Treatment of Copper Ores', in H.H. Dunkin (ed), Ore Dressing Methods in Australia and Adjacent Territories, Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, Melbourne, 1953, pp. 163-192 Patterson, B.G., 'The Story of the Mount Morgan Mine', in Queensland Government Mining Journal, vol. 51, June 1950, pp. 370–373, 378–382, 385–388, 391–392 Patterson, B.G., 'The Story of the Discovery of Mount Morgan Retold', in Journal of the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, vol. 4, no. 1, 1950, p. 68 Patterson, B.G. and Thomas, G.A., 'Mount Morgan (Queensland) Practice in Recording and Estimating Ore Tonnages and values', in Australian Institute of Mining Engineers Proceedings, vol. 6, no. 11, April 1920, pp. 153–84 Pullar, Stuart & H.M. Hennessy, 'Copper Smelting at Mount Morgan', in Frank Green (ed), Extractive Metallurgy in Australia: non-ferrous metallurgy, Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, Melbourne, 1953, pp. 123-139 Schnabel, Carl & Henry Louis, Handbook of Metallurgy (2 vols), Macmillan, New York, 1898 SIMTARS, Mount Morgan Mine: Occupational Health and Safety/Environment Review, report to Department of Mines and Energy, 2000 Smith, C.E., The Morgan Family of Mount Morgan Fame, C.E. Smith, Merewether Heights, 1990 Sykes, F.W., Mount Morgan: its history, past, present and probable future, William Donagly, Mount Morgan, 1888 Sykes, F.W., The Mount Morgan gold mine, Queensland, an authentic treatise on the mine, works and treatment, up to date, 1st October 1892, together with a concise history of the mine and district and schedules, tables and summaries, John Sands Printer, Sydney, 1893 Unger, Corinne & Laurencont, Tania, Mount Morgan Minesite: Draft Rehabilitation Plan, Department of Mines and Energy, 2001 Walker, Meredith, Mount Morgan: a study of the town character and ways and means of conserving and enhancing it, report to National Trust of Queensland, 1979 White, James; White, F.S. and Sewell, L.G., 'Underground Mining at Mount Morgan, Queensland', in Australian Institute of Mining Engineers Proceedings, vol. 6, no. 11, April 1920, pp. 211–34 [White, James], 'Mount Morgan', in Transactions of the Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers, vol. 15, 1911, pt. ii Whitmore, Ray, Decommissioning Mount Morgan Mine: heritage implications and recommendations, report to Mount Morgan Limited, 1990

Peter Bell 2 August 2002

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History of Mount Morgan Mine

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