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The Development of Mining Technology in Australia

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The Development of Mining Technology in Australia The Development of Mining Technology in Australia 1801 - 1945 Ralph Winter Birrell Submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. July 2005 Department of History The University of Melbourne Declaration This is to certify that (1) the thesis comprises only my original work towards the PhD. (2) due acknowledgement has been made in the text to all other material used. (3) the thesis is less than 100,000 words in length, exclusive of tables, maps, bibliographies and appendices. i Abstract From a small beginning at Newcastle in 1801 when convicts began mining coal exposed on the banks of the Hunter River, the mining industry has grown to be a large sector of the Australian economy, providing an export income of A$58 billion in 2004 (almost forty percent of total exports) as well as providing the raw materials for local industries. The changing technologies used to develop this industry are an important part of our development as a nation, but few historians have written about them. This thesis offers an interpretive framework for visualising the mining industry as an historically coherent entity and for understanding the technological innovations in mining over 200 years. It focuses on the period to 1945. In the first fifty years coal and copper were mined in New South Wales and silver lead and copper in South Australia. Machines were introduced in the 1830s when a British joint stock company took over the coal mine and the use of machines increased in the 1840s when companies financed locally or from Britain began developing silver lead and copper mines. Technologies already developed in the north of England, Scotland, Germany, Cornwall, and Wales were imported and miners from England, Scotland, Germany and Cornwall and smeltermen from Wales migrated to Australia. British mining law was followed without question. This situation was revolutionised when Edward Hargraves, and his partners, found alluvial gold in commercial amounts at Ophir, 150 kilometres west of Sydney, in 1851. Hargraves had experience in alluvial mining in California and he embarked on a skilful publicity campaign to start a rush on the Californian pattern. His aim was to claim a reward from the government in return for boosting the economy and preventing the resumption of transportation of convicts to New South Wales. In terms of modern management theory his place in history is not the charlatan and fraud that some historians have suggested but an entrepreneur who changed the course of mining in Australia. Unwittingly or not he forced a change from a semi-feudal British legal system dominated by large companies, and enabled the emergence of a more democratic system which permitted both individual and company mining. In the confusion of the first rushes the government allowed the individual miner to peg a small claim on which he ii could dig for gold on payment of a licence fee. This small change led to many innovations in mining law and mining technology Australia. Following the ideas of Joel Mokyr and Roger Burt these innovations are assessed as micro-innovations (successive small changes) or as macro-innovations (radical new concepts without clear precedents); but I extend the latter concept to include several important micro-innovations that combined into what amounts to a singular new concept. Early macro-innovations were wet deep lead mining and the concept of the no-liability company and later ones were dry crushing, roasting, and cyanide filtering of sulpho-telluride gold ores and differential flotation of the complex sulphide ores of lead, zinc and copper. iii Table of Contents Page Abstract i Note : Conversion of Units iv Acknowledgements vi Introduction 1 Chapter 1 Muscles to Steam – Mining in Australia 1801 -1851 13 Chapter 2 The Gold Rushes 1851 – 1855 35 Chapter 3 The Emergence of a New Type of Gold Mining 65 Company 1855 – 1870 Chapter 4 Coal and Metalliferous Mining 1851 – 1870 95 Chapter 5 Government Policy and the Growth of Mining 110 Infrastructure 1870 -1900 Chapter 6 Innovations in Ore Extraction 1870 – 1900 139 Chapter 7 Innovations in Ore Processing 1870 – 1900 165 Chapter 8 Solving the Sliming Problem 1900 – 1945 193 Chapter 9 A Period of both Progress and Decline 1900 – 1945 222 Chapter 10 Conclusions 239 Epilogue 1945 – 2004 269 Appendix 1 Goldfields and Mining Sites in Australia 281 2 Glossary of Mining Terms 284 3 Discussion of G. Thureau‘s Report of 1877 295 4 The Movement from Individual to Company Employment 298 5 Ore Extraction 306 6 Ore Processing 351 7 Smelting 375 8 Mineral Production Statistics 384 Bibliography 386 iv Note : Conversion of Units In this thesis I have followed the convention of using the names and units of currency and weights and measures that were in use at the time I am writing about. As Australia was a British colony in the nineteenth century British imperial units were adopted without question. Change to a metric system occurred from 1966. Currency The imperial unit was the pound sterling, the symbol being £1. From 1821 the British monetary system was based on gold, the so-called gold standard, with the pound note being freely convertible to gold. The relative value between the pound note and one ounce of pure gold had been fixed at £4 / 4 / 11½ when Sir Isaac Newton was Warden of the Royal Mint in the late 1600s.1 This was still the price paid for an ounce of pure gold by the Bank of England at the start of the Australian gold rushes in 1851. Australian banks usually paid less than this in order to make a profit and the price was discounted further if the gold was impure. Due to changes in the economy with inflation and deflation of the currency over time the purchasing value of the pound sterling varied. In the 1851 to 1854 period of the rushes inflation reduced the purchasing power as the price of goods rose due to increased demand but this was corrected after 1854 in a period of deflation, and prices in 1860 were similar to those of 1851. The price of gold did not vary until the 1932, when inflation of the Australian pound led the Australian government to adjust the price to £A1.25 (equal to the £1 sterling). This meant the price of gold was £A5 /6 /3. In 1934 the United States government raised the price of gold to $US34 an ounce, with a consequent rise in price to £A9. The price fluctuated around this value until 1967 when Australian gold producers were allowed to sell their gold indirectly on an unofficial world market. This period ended in 1976 when the sale of gold was deregulated and the price was determined by world supply and demand. The price rose to $A710 per ounce in 1987 and has fluctuated considerably since then due to world demand and varying currency exchange rates.2 1 S. Close, The Great Gold Renaissance, Kew, Surbiton Associates, 2002, p. 12. Pure gold was specified to be 24 carat while gold coinage was about 22 carat and contained impurities such as silver. 2 Ibid., pp. 20-3. v The Australian pound was converted to the Australian dollar in 1966 with two dollars being equal value to one pound. Various economists have calculated an equivalent purchasing power for the dollar and the earlier pound since 1860 when prices were reasonably stable after the gold rushes. These show that one pound sterling or Australian in 1860 would purchase a similar amount of goods and services as 74.2 dollars in 1992, one pound in 1895 equalled roughly 100 dollars in 1992, but inflation since then has further reduced the purchasing power of the Australian currency by a small amount. We can say roughly that a capital investment of £10,000 in a mining company in 1895 would be about the same as an investment of $1 million in the 1990s.3 In the period 1860 to 1890 the average wage of a miner was between about £2. 10s compared with about $700 at present, so the purchasing power has only changed a small amount for the better. Weights and Measures For most of the period under review the unit of mass (weight) avoirdupois was the imperial pound (lb), equal to 16 ounces (ozs), with the imperial ton being 2240 lbs. This was sometimes called the ‗long ton‘, with a ‗short ton‘ being 2000 lbs. After conversion to decimal the unit is the kilogram of 1000 grams with the tonne being 1000 kilograms. 1 imperial pound equals 0.44 kilogams and 1 ton equals 0.9842 tonnes. For gold the troy measure was used with 1 troy ounce equal to 20 pennyweights and each pennyweight equal to 24 grains. 12 troy ounces equalled one troy pound. In the decimal system 31.104 grams equals one troy ounce. For measures the early units were the foot of 12 inches, with three feet equalling one yard and 1760 yards equalling one mile. In the decimal system one inch = 25.4 mm, one foot equals 305 mm and one yard equals 0.91 metres. For area one acre imperial area equals 0.4 hectares in the decimal system. 3 B. R. Mitchell, International Historical Statistics Africa, Asia & Oceania 1750-1988, pp. 939-40. See Brian Hill, unpublished thesis, ‗The Little Man‘ David Ziman, Mining Giant , Flinders University, 2000, p. v. vi Acknowledgements Many people have assisted and encouraged me to complete this thesis. I can only thank them for their help. Dr Brian Hill and Dr Richard Hartley encouraged me to commence the course and have provided assistance with references and articles.
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