The Mt Lyell Mining & Railway Company

The Brief History Of Mt Lyell

   
The history of the Mt Lyell Mining & Railway Company spans over one hundred years, with the company being regarded as an icon in Australian mining.
In 1883 three gold diggers, Mick and Bill McDonough and Steve Karlson pegged out 50 acres of land in the Valley "Chamouni", (later to become known as "Linda Valley"). The area that they had pegged included the large Ironstone outcrop which became known as "The Iron Blow". And so with the first pegging of the Lyell fields, began one of Australia's great mines.
In the early years, all supplies were brought in to the area from Strahan, across Macquarie Harbour, up the King River to Teepookana and then through some 26 rapids to Sailor Jack's Creek. From here the supplies were lugged by professional packers, over 4 miles up the King River Gorge for a penny a pound to the store at the 15 mile, where they were sorted and later taken to the fields.
In 1888 the Mt Lyell Gold Mining Company was formed by a syndicate of six, as follows, Bill Dixon, Mick and Bill McDonough, James Crotty, Steve Karlson, and F.O.Henry. The mine made little profit, and in 1892 two Adelaide financiers, Kelly and Orr, who realised that a fortune in copper was being washed down the sluice boxes, brought the mine and formed the Mt Lyell Mining Company. By now 28 companies where working the field. Following internal feuding between the new Directors and Crotty, the later was to leave the Company with 3000 Mt Lyell Shares and the small lease of North Mt Lyell. This Company he built into a Company to rival for a short time, the might of Mt Lyell.
In 1893 with a view to building a railway to Strahan the Mt Lyell Company was liquidated and a new company, The Mt Lyell Mining & Railway Company Formed and was incorporated on 29th March 1893. By 1896 the ABT Railway was built between Teepookana on the King River, to Penghana, (later to become Queenstown).
By 1901 the railway had been extended to Regatta Point in Strahan, and the new township of Queenstown was flourishing. As well the company's brilliant metallurgist, Robert Sticht had built a Smelting Plant and had 11 blast furnaces working. Sticht perfected a system called "Pyritic Smelting" which utilised sulphides locked within the ore to generate and maintain heat. This system revolutionised smelting through-out the world, and resulted in a drastic cut in the amount of expensive fuels needed for smelting. 
On the other side of the mountain range, the North Lyell Copper Company and Crotty had established the township of Gormanston adjacent to the workings of the Iron Blow. By 1901 they had also built a railway that ran from the township of Linda to Kelly Basin on the southern end of Macquarie Harbour, and along the line at the foot of Mt Jukes, had established the smelting towns of Crotty, and Darwin.
The ore of the North Mt Lyell Copper Company was much richer than that of the great Mt Lyell Company, and English investors were pouring thousands of pounds into the company not knowing that by the end of the decade, it was to die, along with the dreams and the man who discovered it.
In 1903 due to the failure of the furnaces at Crotty and the death of Crotty himself, the North Mt Lyell Copper Company decided to amalgamate with the Mt Lyell Mining & Railway Company, ending one of the most bitter and costly corporate feud's in Australia. The amalgamation sounded the death knell for not only the North Lyell Co, but also the towns of Crotty and Darwin, the Port and town of Pillinger at Kelly Basin, the railway and the failed smelters along the line.
On the 12th of December 1912 underground in the North Lyell mine a fire broke out causing dense smoke and mayhem for the workers caught in the maize of tunnels below the surface. Despite frantic efforts above surface, forty two men lost their lives in a disaster that shocked the mining world.
In 1914 the company built its own Hydro Electric Power scheme to service the expanding mine, and to supply power to the residents of the Mt Lyell Region at Lake Margaret.
In 1922 the "Iron Blow", now a vast open cut, was phased out leaving the underground workings to supply the ore which after crushing and flotation, was fed into furnaces to emerge as copper matte. This matte was then fed into converters which turned it into blistered copper. Unfortunately this copper contained many impurities, so in 1928 a refinery was to further refine the copper by means of electrolysis, which produced copper 99.8% pure.
In 1934 the West Lyell came into operation, using huge mechanical shovels to load Euclid trucks. In it's 38 year history, the West Lyell open cut produced 47 million tons of copper ore and 57 million tons of overburden had been removed. In 1972 the open cut closed.
In 1963 the ABT railway closed after 67 years of operation. The closure brought on by the need to replace many of the bridges along the line and the replacement of much of the rolling stock. In 1964 economics saw the closure of the refinery, and in 1969 came the shutdown of the smelters. The Company which had its beginnings amidst turmoil at the turn of the century, had entered a new generation, and along with it came new problems. In 1976 depressed copper prices and changing economics forced the retrenchments of almost half of the workforce.
In 1994 the mine closed for twelve months, until taken over by West Australian Mining Company, Gold Mines of Australia, and the mine was renamed Copper Mines of Tasmania. After several years of low copper prices making the operation no longer viable, the mine was sold to Indian Company, Twin Star Holdings, a family company of Stirlite Industries. They will use the ore for their own smelting operations in India.
At the time of writing, the company is still owned by Stirlite, and still operating.