Fynes-Clinton, P. N.

University of Queensland eSpace

144 
GHOST TOWNS OF QUEENSLAND 
Part 1 
THE CLONCURRY COPPERFIELD 
[By P. FYNES-CLINTON] 
(Read at a meeting of the Society on 26 August 1965.) 
Last year after 1 had had the privUege of addressing you 
on the centenary of the City of TownsviUe it was suggested 
that 1 might take for a subject the ghost towns of Queens-
land—those towns which became extinct, or almost so, after 
the mineral deposits which sustained them had petered out. 
Until 1 spoke to an elderly friend who has a wide know-
ledge of mining in the north, I had not realised the magnitude 
of the task I had undertaken. 
It is not generally known that in the hinterland between 
Cooktown and Cairns there are at least forty towns and 
hamlets where at some time or other the intrepid miners dug 
a living for what it was worth from gold, tin or copper, or, 
in some instances, from wolfram, molybdenite and the other 
compounds of steel. 
Cooktown and the Palmer is a story in itself and one which 
1 hope will be taken up in due course by one more competent 
than 1. 
BOOM AND COLLAPSE 
Because of the sweeping scope of the subject I have, with 
your approval I trust, decided to confine this evening's talk to 
the lost towns of the Cloncurry copper field, its trials and 
tribulations, its short-lived boom of prosperity, and its final 
collapse under stress of economic frustration, and to some 
degree, of the folly of human errors. 
The towns which, for some years in the early part of this 
century, illuminated the night sky with the glare of their 
smelter stacks and slag dumps were Kuridala (originally 
called Friezeland), Selwyn (or Mt. Elliott) and to the north. 
Mount Cuthbert. 
The keen, and at times, bitter rivalry, between the Mount 
Elliott and Hampden-Cloncurry companies forms one of the 
most romantic and exciting chapters in the history of North 
Queensland mining. 
145 
ERNEST HENRY (1855) at 18 years of age, in the uniform of the 72nd High-
landers, now The Seaforths. He fought in the Crimean War as an ensign. 
The Great AustraUan copper mine near Cloncurry, discovered by Ernest Henry 
in 1866. 
Photo courtesy Mt. Isa Mines Ltd. 
146 
DOUR FRONTIERSMAN 
The Cloncurry copper field was opened up by Ernest 
Henry, that dour pastoraUst-explorer who took to horse each 
time misfortune forced him to abandon his latest acquisition. 
In 1867 his exit from the Flinders, forced by drought and 
poor markets, took him to Cloncurry where he discovered 
the Great Australian mine. 
Henry was no geologist and knew little of minerals, but 
like John CampbeU MUes at Mount Isa, more than half a 
century later, he was intrigued by the weight of the material 
he broke from the rugged outcrops. Assays at Rockhampton 
confirmed the presence of copper, and Henry soon learned 
that the green tint distinguished copper. His first discovery, 
the Great Australian Mine, was near the town of Cloncurry 
itself. He later discovered the Argylla and Mount Oxide 
mines to the north. 
EARLY DEVELOPMENT 
Fred Gibson opened up Hampden (later Kuridala) and 
James Elliott took up the first Mount Elliot lease near Selwyn. 
A. Kennedy and Sons developed the Duchess, to the west 
of Kuridala, or Friezeland, as it was first called, and Anthony 
AUis was mainly responsible for opening up the Macgregor 
and Trekelano mines in the same region. 
The Mt. Cuthbert Company was promoted by Power Bros. 
Together these mines formed a pattern of some 200 mUes 
running north and south over a width of 80 mUes. 
I. L. Styne, in Cummins and CampbeU's Monthly Maga-
zine of January 1933, wrote of this tract as a phenomenon 
in that in many instances it seemed to be broken along many 
lines of weakness, and hot aqueous solutions carrying iron, 
gold, copper, sUver and sulphur, had been forced through the 
fissures, and thus deposited. 
Mount Isa subsequently proved the existence of aU these 
in a single lode. 
FOLLIES OF DEVELOPERS 
The sad part of the Cloncurry copper story is the faUure 
of its promoters to widen their exploration and to prove 
reserves, if reserves there were. 
Actually many competent authorities were deceived by the 
surface extent of the lode and neglected to assess its true 
values. It was this lapse that in later years caused the two 
major smelting companies — Mt. EUiott and Hampden-
Cloncurry — to miss Mount Isa. 
147 
JAMES VENTURE MULLIGAN 
In the early 1880's James Venture Mulligan, discoverer of 
the Palmer goldfield, led a party to the Cloncurry area and 
is presumed to have gone very close to Mount Isa. MulUgan's 
assessment was that the field could not be a successful gold 
proposition, but he did believe that the field was so auriferous 
that the gold would pay expenses and make copper profitable. 
His prediction had some ring of truth for in the early produc-
tion days of Mt. Isa the gold content in the silver lead buUion 
covered the freight cost to the refineries in Europe. 
PROPHECY UNFULFILLED 
Among those who shared Ernest Henry's optimism was 
Robert Logan Jack, a geologist of high repute, who went to 
Cloncurry by horseback in 1881. He classified the Great 
Australian mine as a "mountain of copper," Mt. Leviathan as 
"a mass of the purest possible iron ore," and Cloncurry "the 
future industrial city of the west." Jack accompanied Henry 
to his Argylla mine and prophesied that it would richly 
reward him. 
AN EARLY FAILURE 
In 1884 a Scottish group, acting on the report of J. R. 
Robertson, a retired Indian Army officer, practising as a 
geologist, purchased the Great AustraUan from Henry. 
148 
The company erected water jacket smelters and employed 
200 men to erect machinery, sink wells and burn charcoal for 
the furnaces. There was no railway and suppUes and 
materials were road-hauled 270 mUes from Normanton where 
they were landed by ship. 
The first furnace was lighted in June 1885. The mine soon 
disappointed the shareholders. Copper slumped from £70 
to £44 per ton, and in thirteen months the smeUer produced 
only 192 tons of copper. The mine closed in 1887, after 
having won only 404 tons of copper worth £15,500—a poor 
result from the millions of tons predicted by Warden Uhr 
three years earlier. 
Geoffrey Blainey, summing up the results of this first com-
mercial venture in his authoritative work, Mines In The 
Spinifex (Angus & Robertson) said: 
"Above aU the directors themselves had gambled on the 
ore being far more extensive than it proved to be. The 
mine laughed at their folly, yielding in two years less ore 
than Mount Isa smelts in a day." 
In the meantime Fred Gibson, at Hampden, and James 
Elliott, at Mt. Elliott, were developing their leases. The 
Kennedys were busy at the Duchess. 
RAILWAY NEEDED 
After the failure of the Great Australian venture the 
prospect of further smelting depended on price recovery and 
the provision of rail connection. The agitation for a railway 
was rife. Ernest Henry led a Government surveyor over a 
proposed route from Cloncurry to the Gulf at Normanton. 
Other suggestions were for connecting Australian cities by 
a transcontinental line running from Melbourne through 
Bourke and CharlevUle to Cloncurry. In 1880 the then 
Premier (Sir Thomas Mcllwraith) endeavoured by land 
grants to encourage pastoralists to finance the connection 
of Cloncurry with Roma, then the western terminus from 
Brisbane. 
The proposal attracted the interest of Major-General H. 
Fielding, representing London and Paris financiers. Fielding 
surveyed the route from Roma, taking ship in the Gulf to 
return to Brisbane. He informed Mcllwraith of his doubts 
concerning the quality of the land on offer and that proposal 
also fell through. 
RUST AND DECAY 
In 1890 over 3,000 tons of raUs were offloaded at Norman-
ton for the start of a line to Cloncurry, but not a length was 
laid. The whole steel cargo rusted into decay on the saltpans 
of the Gulf shores. 
149 
ANOTHER SQUIB 
Towards the end of the century Coates, the cotton magnate 
of Glasgow, announced its intention of building a raUway to 
Cloncurry and hope simmered again among the tin shanties 
of Cloncurry. According to Geoffrey Blainey, Ernest Henry 
broke a long silence by saying: "I have been waiting thirty-
three years for this chance of opening up the mines, and I 
think the time is now arrived. I cannot wait another thirty-
three." 
But the Coates project was another "damp squib." 
The raUway did come eventually from the unexpected 
source. 
In 1906 William Kidston, Queensland Premier of the day, 
having survived a raU trip to Richmond, or possibly Winton, 
embarked on the Cobb and Co. mail coach to travel another 
couple of hundred miles over unformed roads to Cloncurry. 
Kidston must have travelled far enough to see the crunch-
ing windlasses and the sweat that produced ore for horse and 
wagon transport to distant smelters. 
The line was extended from Richmond until Cloncurry, a 
town of many hopeful men and fewer women, brave as they 
were, saw the first train steam into the 'Curry. 
By that time, the pioneer copper miners were disappearing 
from the scene. They were in truth landholders who were 
trying to establish their independence far away from the 
settled pastoral frontier. 
ADVENT OF MOFFAT 
James EUiott had not the financial resources to develop 
his lease. He sold the mine to another pastoraUst, James 
Morphett, who in turn sold to John Moffat, the founder of 
Irvinebank, and a recognised master promoter of mining ven-
tures. Moffat invested large capital in his new acquisition. 
EUiott died in 1907, a tired, lonely man. He had departed 
by the time Moffat had floated the Mt. Elliott company on the 
London market. 
By this time a Melbourne syndicate headed by WilUam 
Orr, who became chairman of directors, had acquired the 
Gibson interests in the Hampden or Friezeland area. 
And so, by the time the iron horse found its new terminal 
at Cloncurry, the short-lived but turbulent, exciting towns of 
Mount Elliott and Kuridala were shaping. 
William Orr and his Melbourne compatriots, flush with 
the increment from Mt. LyeU, were eager to establish a new 
empire in this faraway region of the continent. 
150 
JOHN MOFFATT 
Mt. LyeU, as some of you may remember, had aU the 
semblance of a "damp squib" until, in the mining vernacular, 
it came good. 
SMELTER SITES FIXED 
The Hampden-Cloncurry company explored the Hampden, 
Duchess, Mount Elliott, and Mt. Cuthbert at great expense. 
They had settled on Friezeland-cum-Kuridala as the centre 
of smelting operations. 
Then into the arena came WUliam H. Corbould as the 
local manager for the London company which owned the 
Mt. Elliott mine and resolved upon Selwyn, or Mt. Elliott, 
as the site for their smelting activities. 
Neither company spared expense in developing their 
separate interests. When the railway was extended to Clon-
curry, William L. Bailleau arranged with the Queensland 
Government to extend the line 71 miles south to the Mt. 
EUiott mine at Selwyn. As the line was surveyed to pass the 
Hampden mine, that company agreed to pay its share. 
The two companies deposited £94,000 which the Govern-
ment repaid when the railway became profitable. 
151 
W. H. CORBOULD 
By courtesy Angus and Robertson Ltd. 
Long before the line reached Selwyn, wagon trains had 
hauled machinery and boUers for the mine and smelters. A 
new town was born. 
Another was ready to spark not far north at the Hampden, 
or Kuridala, as we who are old enough have come to know 
or remember it. 
What towns they were! It was Charters Towers and 
Gympie all over again! 
PROSPERITY BEGINS 
On Saturdays and pay nights the streets were monopolised 
by miners off shift. They fraternised in the "pubs" or in the 
pool rooms while the women and children fluttered around 
the shops and stores, glad to be away for a few fleeting hours 
from the dim light of the kerosene lamps and the overbearing 
atmosphere of galvanised iron cottages with their myriads of 
tantaUsing insects. 
The sky for mUes glowed with the multitudinous reflections 
from the smelters. 
Both companies prospered, and as the bUster ingots flowed 
through the raU hub at Cloncurry there was an air of 
152 
prosperity which for many years had eluded the arid country 
beyond the rolling downs. 
7,000 LIVED FROM COPPER 
It is estimated that the Kuridala and Selwyn enterprises, 
and the third smelter later estabhshed to the north of Clon-
curry at Mt. Cuthbert, gave direct employment to 3,000 men 
in the smelters and in the mines from which the ores were 
won. The work force of railwaymen, carriers and businesses 
encouraged by the development of this new industry would 
easily have doubled that figure. 
At the height of the boom the copper industry alone sup-
ported a population of 7,000. 
When the First World War broke out the boom sweUed 
higher. 
The miners and their civic compatriots enlisted in respect-
able numbers to have a round or two with Kaiser BUI. 
But there was always a pool of workers to maintain the 
flow of production. 
WARNING SIGNS 
However, in the inner counsels the ears of informed men 
caught the murmur of approaching difficulties. 
Corbould began to worry about the capacity of his avaU-
able ores. The high-grade ores in the upper levels of the 
Mt. EUiott mine were diminishing and he feared the econo-
mies of treating the lower sulphide ores which, in his estima-
tion, would yield only a third at most of current working 
values. 
Hampden-Cloncurry had similar anxieties and a "rat race" 
developed between the two companies for other mines. 
Mt. Elliott scored a tactical victory with the acquisition of 
the Hampden Consuls mine, almost on the boundary of the 
Hampden-Cloncurry company's Hampden smelters at Kuri-
dala. 
ORR'S PREDICAMENT 
William Orr, as chairman of Hampden-Cloncurry, was also 
a director of the Consuls mine. He faced his fellow directors 
of Hampden-Cloncurry at their next meeting without diffi-
dence. As a director of one company he had supported the 
better offer. 
Nevertheless, the two companies which had invested vast 
sums in independent tramways to transport their ores were 
crossing their own paths, so to speak. 
Efforts to effect a merger and arrange centralised smelting 
were unavailing. The two companies were irreconcilable in 
their determination to survive as the fitter. 
153 
Mt. Elliott had done fairly weU in the wartime boom. It 
spent £100,000 in deepening the Mt. EUiott mine and, having 
failed to obtain permission for establishing a small refinery at 
TownsviUe, erected the plant on the Bowen coalfield. In 
1917 the company doubled the length of its furnace, so that 
it could handle a larger tonnage of low-grade ore, but when it 
was commissioned the smelter hands said it was dangerous. 
Corbould thereupon closed the smelters and shortened the 
furnace by ten feet. 
Then a heavy wet season ensued and fire broke out in the 
Consuls mine for a second time, necessitating closure of the 
main workings for most of the year. 
BEGINNING OF THE END 
In May, when the smelters were again working smoothly 
after the flood, industrial trouble closed them down for 
another two months. 
In 1918 Hampden-Cloncurry fared better. The company 
paid out in dividends £437,000, a large sum in those days. 
William Orr's influence in securing the Hampden and the 
Duchess enabled the company to maintain a satisfactory 
smelting combination. 
But the conflict between the two groups was approaching 
disaster. Neither had sufficient reserves to operate econo-
mically after the war boom had ended. 
In November 1918 a serious breakdown occurred in the 
Hampden smelters. About the same time a broken crank-
shaft ended a record run at Mount Cuthbert. With the Mt. 
Elliott men on strike it was a poor Christmas. 
Only Mt. Elliott opened in the New Year, but the slump 
in copper prices forced the company within two months to 
pay off its 650 employees. 
And so the short-Uved copper boom was at an end. Mt. 
Elliott and Mt. Cuthbert operated on a very reduced scale 
until 1920 when the furnaces finally went out. 
THE FINAL FLING 
Mt. Elliott alone sparred for a revival. In 1925 it raised 
enough money to build a new treatment works at Cloncurry, 
but the plant never turned a wheel. It was said at the time 
that the plant breached an overseas patent. 
The company continued to search for mines beyond 
Queensland. Corbould, with his faith in a revival of the old 
works under single control, apparently lost patience with his 
London bosses, and resigned as their AustraUan represen-
tative. 
154 
It was a bitter disappointment for Corbould, who was sure 
that he had proved that low-grade ores could be profitably 
treated at a central smelter, despite the cost eaten up by 
locomotive smoke on the long haul of some 480 miles to the 
sea outlet at TownsviUe. 
It is a fair presumption that with Corbould's departure the 
Mt. EUiott company lost Mount Isa. 
In later years Corbould formed a company which acquired 
some of the more valuable Mount Isa leases. These were 
subsequently sold to Mining Trust, the first operator of the 
field. 
LIGHTS FADE OUT 
On the old copper field only a few isolated remnants of 
brick and mortar, and possibly a stray beast which had wan-
dered from more congenial pastures, give any sign of the 
excitement of yore. 
Selwyn, Kuridala and Mt. Cuthbert are mere ghosts of 
that harsh, but exciting era. 
The glow that lighted the horizon for miles around with 
a splendour more spectacular and more realistic than a 
dozen pyrotechnic displays went out forever. 
Only the moon at its full now illumines the night and aU 
it reveals is the spinifex. 
THE 'CURRY STILL THERE 
Cloncurry itself survives somewhat becalmed, but solid in 
the centre of the vast beef reservoir that sustains it. 
Maybe its citizens are a little bewildered at the turn fate 
has taken, first by the excision of the new mineral giant from 
its sphere of local government and later the transfer to Mount 
Isa of the great air terminal where Qantas and the Flying 
Doctor pioneered world and State-wide aerial communica-
tion. These services, originated at Cloncurry, have made 
distance and isolation small matters in comparison with the 
days of past glory. 


Ghost towns of Queensland : part I : the Cloncurry copperfield

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Ghost towns of Queensland : part I : the Cloncurry copperfield

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