All correspondence to: Mel Davies OAM Business School, Economics MBDP M251 University of Western Australia 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley 6009, W. Australia Tel. (W) 08-64882926 (H) 08-92953265 Fax: 08-64881016 . Email: [email protected] Newsletter No. 3 SEPTEMBER 2019 Patron: Professor Geoffrey Blainey, AC ABN 96 220 329 754 Web page: http://www.mininghistory.asn.au ISSUE 98 REPORT ON 25TH CONFERENCE, visit the well-organized mining museum ATHERTON, QUEENSLAND there and the intact early engine houses of Thanks to Conference co-organiser Jan the Great Northern mine nearby. We then Wegner for providing the following went on to Irvinebank, where we toured outline of the conference activities. Out of the ruins of Moffat’s mill and smelter modesty, what she did not say was that it sites and his residence, Loudon House, was a very successful week of activities now a museum. We also visited Moffat’s which included a wide variety of papers. premier mine, the Vulcan, which still Some 70 people attended, plus a numBer boasts one of the few intact headframes of of one-day delegates. the traditional four-post design along with ‘Far north Queensland hosted the concrete machinery bases for the winder, Australasian Mining History compressor and pump. The third field trip Association’s conference this year, in went to the copper and lead mining field Atherton, centre of the farming and of Chillagoe to see the remains of the dairying lands of the Atherton Tablelands Chillagoe Smelters, which serviced a west of Cairns. The theme was ‘In the large area of north Queensland’s base footsteps of John Moffat’, as all the metal mining industry from 1901 to 1943, conference field trips followed the and the remains of the Zillmanton, Girofla interests of that base metal mining and Lady Jane mines, the largest on the entrepreneur, whose far-flung interests field. Owen Ray, whose Honours thesis in were administered from nearby Archaeology examined Zillmanton, was a Irvinebank. Conference attendees first handy source of information. Talks by went to Mt Mulligan, the spectacular local historian Mary Bolam at the sandstone mountain known to the local Chillagoe museum, and geologist John Djungan people as Ngarrabullgan, to visit Nethery at the Information Centre, the remains of the coal mine notorious for provided the context. We couldn’t visit the coal dust explosion which killed all 76 Chillagoe without a close-up view of the workers in 1921. We were guided by spectacular limestone bluffs and the historian Peter Bell, who has written Aboriginal art in the rock shelters, so the extensively on the disaster. There are tour included the Mungana art site – also many remains on site, of the mine, the the site of the racecourse for the coke works including the brick abandoned mining town of Mungana smokestack, facilities for loading the coal nearby. We also were guided through the on the railway, and the brick kiln. A modern Mungana mine-site by the second field trip went to Herberton to manager, Ian Hodkinson, including the 1 huge Red Dome open cut, one of the FORTHCOMING EVENTS deepest in Australia. This provided a AMHA 26th Annual ConferenCe, useful contrast in scale between modern Bathurst, November 2020. and 19th – early 20th century mining It has now Been confirmed that the next operations. A short field trip by conference will be held at Bathurst, with Aboriginal member Kal Ellwood also organiser Juanita Wong already at work looked at pre-contact Aboriginal mining with her team that includes Robin and ethnogeology in the area surrounding McLachlan, Paul McGregor and Edward Atherton, which includes several dormant Zbik, to select the venues and conference volcanoes, volcanic lakes, and the deep tours to mining areas of interest. With volcanic pipe called The Crater. over 12 months to go, that should allow Conference papers covered a wide folk sufficient time to save their pennies range of topics, from historical analyses and to prepare papers for presentation. of mining and milling all over Australia to the historical archaeology of town sites International Mining History Congress, and cemeteries; mining songs and poems; Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, 18-22 June the role of miners in the extinction of the 2020 Thylacine; pre-contact Aboriginal mining; As noted in the previous newsletter, the industrial diseases; and transport. Of deadline for abstract submissions for the particular interest was a pictorial and International Mining History Conference, historical presentation by representatives, is 1st November 2019. Submissions Jan Godowski and Monika Dziobeck of should be sent to Prof. Jeremy Mouat, at: the fabulous Wieliczka Salt Mine and [email protected] Cracow Saltworks Museum in Poland. BITS & PIECES The friendly and obliging staff of The Charters Towers Stock Exchange the Atherton International Club provided Ian Scott recently visited Charters Towers us with a good conference venue and kept where he spoke to archivist Michael us well fed, including the best scones on Brumby. Michael provided him with the Tableland, and AMHA member information on the Charters Towers Stock Stephen Imrie made himself Exchange and kindly agreed for Ian to indispensable, looking after IT matters. forward this piece, which will especially A large cast of volunteers made it bring back memories of the conference all possible, including conference visit to that town in 2014: organisers Jan Wegner, Kal Ellwood, Mel Davies and Ruth Kerr; Ken McQueen for ‘Alexander Malcolm envisaged his Royal putting information on the website and Arcade of small shops and offices to link helping with the Proceedings document; Mosman Street with Rutherford Lane at Nic Haygarth for doing the official its rear. It was to be built in the same style approaches to various organisations and as the same named arcade in Melbourne. people; Carole Hardingham for initial Malcolm dreamed big and believed in organising of the venue; and Wendy Charters Towers: from when he first Carter for putting together the arrived as a miner in 1873, to building a accommodation list. Thanks also to Peter set of six timber shops on this site in Shimmin and the Irvinebank Progress 1875-1876, and then replacing them in Association for organising tours and grand style with accommodation for lunch, and Ivan and Mary Searston and twenty. the great crew at the Herberton Mining Unfortunately, Malcolm went into Museum for their guided tours and debt. His life was troubled, and he moved hospitality. to Copeland, New South Wales some Jan Wegner years earlier, occasionally visiting Charters Towers to look after his 2 interests. Malcolm succumbed to Wellington, William Levi Davies, George alcoholism mania and heart failure in the Dunsford, J.F. Hinsch, and I.W. Charters Towers hospital on August 19th, Johnston.’ 1891, at a time when his arcade had been Sources: Charters Towers Stock Exchange given the means to thrive. Records CTSE/1 – 4. CTT: 18/04/1889. NM: 18/04/1889. TNM: 23/05/1889 – 3. The birth of Malcolm's arcade into becoming known more universally at the Mine Explosions Stock Exchange Arcade was inspired by Following the Atherton conference visit one of the arcade's first tenants, to Mount Mulligan, Harold Gallasch has sharebroker John F. Hinsch who made pointed out the that coal mining is not the arrangements to use the arcade floor for a only industry where dust can prove nightly call: there he would be inviting destructive: the public to “respectfully attend and learn the true value of their scrip." ‘A small note about the explosion at the Operations commenced on the evening of Mt Mulligan mine. I believe many people Saturday 20 April 1889. got the impression that this is one of the It was Sydney architect Mark Day's dangers associated with underground coal design of the two-storey masonry arcade mining. While this is true, this type of with glass-roof, large tiled floored space explosion has been far more common in illuminated by gas light at night that made environments such as flour mills and even the difference at least to Hinsch. Here was cotton ginneries. It is the very finely a large public space for the townspeople divided nature of any carbon or to enter the world for making speculative combustible material, mixed with air, that mining investments by purchasing scrip can be highly explosive. A spark is all or subscriptions at evening calls. that is required to initiate an explosion, if This was capitalised upon in May the mixture is right. It would not require 1890 when the sharebrokers dissolved the detonation, as was suggested may have so-called old institution and formed happened at Mt Mulligan. However, if the Charters Towers Stock Exchange. there was no pre-existing appropriate They were dissatisfied with a private mixture of dust in the air, it may have chamber call and arranged for a free call been some detonation, or other explosion, to be held each evening at 8.00 pm from that lifted the coal dust thus creating the the floor of the arcade: ‘to be in better appropriate, dangerous mixture, which touch with the investing public’. would only have needed a spark to then The Charters Towers Stock detonate and be self-generating Exchange had precursors beginning with throughout the mine’. an exchange first being set up in the (From the Ed.) Some members billiards room at the Crown Hotel in 1885 might remember that at one of our followed by another failed attempt by Newcastle conferences, when our late sharebrokers Hunter and Harte in 1886. member John Shoebridge, a NSW Mines The root causes for all to fail were ironed Safety Officer took us to a Safety out when the Charters Towers Stock Establishment and demonstrated how Exchange re-formed under revised rules such an explosion could take place, that with a permanent secretary appointed in many of us present came to appreciate, May 1890.