The Chillagoe smelters is a heritage-listed refinery at Chillagoe-Mungana Caves National Park, Mareeba Mining District, Chillagoe, Shire of Mareeba, Queensland, Australia. It operated in the early 1900s. It is also known as Chillagoe State Smelters. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992.
In its heyday the Chillagoe Smelters were the centre of a thriving mining industry that brought wealth and development to the Chillagoe area. By June 1901, when the railway was completed, Chillagoe was a flourishing town. The railway enabled equipment for the large, innovative Chillagoe Smelters to become operative by September 1901. The Chillagoe Railway & Mining Company equipped its work sites with the most up-to-date machinery and the surrounding mines at Mungana, Zillmanton and Redcap worked on a large scale. At times, the mines, railway and smelter provided employment for up to 1,000 workers.
Chillagoe Smelter operated until 1943 and in its 40 odd year lifetime treated of ore, yielded of copper, of lead, of silver and of gold. By 1943, other smelters were built closer to the then major ore producing areas such as Mount Isa. Easy access to these areas outweighed the economic usefulness of the state run Chillagoe Smelter. In 1950, the buildings and equipment were auctioned. Today the site is managed by Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service.
History The first explorer in the Chillagoe region was James Venture Mulligan on his 1874 exploration trip. Then William Atherton took up pastoral leases in 1887 and built a timber homestead on the bank of Chillagoe Creek.
John Moffat sent the first prospecting party into the area in mid 1887 and they pegged many surface shows.Kerr, 1992:1 Mining on a serious scale began in the district in 1892 at Muldiva, where Moffat's company commenced silver production. Unfortunately a few months before the silver price crashed and the newly built smelter only operated for eighteen months. Moffat erected small exploratory smelters at Calcifer in 1894 and at Girofla (Mungana) in 1896.
In 1896, with mining developments at Mount Lyell (Tasmania) and Kalgoorlie (Western Australia) causing great interest, Moffat sought to raise large scale capital to develop the Chillagoe field. In Melbourne, the heartland of Australian mining investment, he interested a syndicate of capitalists, including James Smith Reid, in a scheme to purchase his leases, to build smelting works and to construct a private railway more than from the government railhead at Mareeba to the mines and smelter. A company called Chillagoe Proprietary Limited was formed in Melbourne and placed its proposal before the Queensland Government. Before the end of 1897, the Mareeba to Chillagoe Railway Act authorised the company to carry out its plans and granted it generous concessions.
Construction on the smelter site commenced in mid 1900 while the railway work was underway, and proceeded slowly, as all materials had to be carried overland from the advancing railhead which reached Chillagoe in August 1901.
In mid 1900, the Chillagoe Company had operating: three boilers, three steam engines , one active reduction works, two pumps, of tramway, of water mains, two brick machines, one clay mill, two saw benches, one traction engine, and a dam constructed, valued at a total of . Walkers of Maryborough contracted for the iron frames of the furnaces and Jack and Newell were agents for a large amount of the smaller material for the construction of the smelters. The proposed smelting plant being erected under the supervision of J. M. Higgins (former metallurgist of Dry Creek Works, South Australia) and R. Shepherd (the construction engineer who had supervised the erection of the Mount Lyell smelters) was to treat of ore per day and comprise six furnaces. By 1901 there were five boilers, ten steam engines , nine pumps, two rock breakers, one brick machine, six furnaces, four blowers, two lathes, three drilling machines, one traction engine, several small machines, one roller, and two grinders, valued at a total of .
Six furnaces were blown in on 13 October 1902, but did not run freely, treating only of ore for of gold, of copper, of silver, valued at , and the works were shut down for reconstruction of the company. A major problem was the lack of ore which was only being obtained from Redcap and Calcifer. The company had hoped to receive ore from Mount Garnet also. Managers changed frequently, Frederick Back in 1903 and Thomas James Greenway in 1904. In the early years of operations the Chillagoe smelter treated lead ore from Girofla mine and Torpy's Crooked Creek silver lead mine, producing of lead and of silver in 1904. The converters were blown in on 21 January 1905.
In 1907, the Huntingdon-Heberlein process plant was erected at a cost of . Extensive excavations were done and rails laid to ore bins on the hill opposite the main smelters. The process flow involved - rock breaker, converter kettles for 12 hours desulphurising process, then to the lead furnaces. A new electric plant was also installed.
A new lead furnace was blown in on 21 January 1908. However, in 1908 there was hardly a mine operating outside of the company mines as an outcome of wage increases with the emergence of unions and declining copper prices. The new copper furnace was blown in on 20 February 1908 and the converter plant was operating effectively by early March that year. Much better lead recoveries were noticeable after the second converter was introduced into the line, and ores had to be preliminarily roasted as well. At a cost of the Chillagoe Railway and Mines Company Pty Limited could treat sulphide ores from its Mungana mines as well as public ore. They could also treat the Penzance (Redcap), Boomerang (Calcifer) and Calcifer slag dump material, along with self-fluxing mixture with Ruddygore ore. To achieve this the company had to extend its tramline from the Chillagoe railway at Harper Siding to the Boomerang and Calcifer slag dump.
By 1909, the lead price had fallen markedly and the Huntingdon-Heberlein plant had to be partially shut down.
A fourth blast furnace was installed in 1909 to treat the copper ore. A larger air-blowing machine also improved the copper smelting. A heavy duty horizontal compound condensing steam engine with duplex air cylinders could blow two converter stands at once. A new high pressure motor-driven air compressor supplied air to the pneumatic ram used for relining converter vessels. A DC generator was ordered for the motors and lighting. The ore sampling floor was doubled in capacity. A high-lift motor-driven centrifugal pump for pumping furnace jacket water was added. A new sample crushing office was attached with electric motors driving the pulverizers.
Ore supplies locally were poor in 1910 and ore was scavenged across the Etheridge Goldfield to supply Chillagoe smelters. The roasting furnaces were supplied with all the Etheridge gold mine dumps, the copper smelters worked on sintered Havelock residues, along with Mungana copper-lead oxides and clean lead ores from the Lady Jane, Girofla and Etheridge mines. Overhead central flues were fitted over the copper and lead furnaces.
Heavy rain on the Etheridge watershed washed away the Tate and Lynd River railway bridges and the Chillagoe smelters had to close between 19 April and 3 May 1911. Copper smelting only operated for half the year. The copper furnace was remodelled in May 1911 with extra battery jackets replacing the brick shaft. The forehearths of cast iron were also replaced by riveted mild steel. The tanks were lined with chrome bricks. A Dwight-Lloyd unit for the palate sintering process was completed by November 1911. However a large part of the smelter, including an electric crane, was destroyed by fire. The damage was quickly repaired and the smelter recommenced in February 1912.
Sixty feet of the main stack dust flue collapsed in May 1912. Rebuilding was completed by 13 June. A temporary chimney was used for the lead smelters only. In early June 1912 the Chillagoe lead smelter was closed down and 50 men laid off. The water jacket on the copper smelter burst and copper smelting also closed down. The lead smelter resumed on 2 August 1912 and the copper smelter on 4 September 1912. Both furnaces ran until October when the coke ran out. The Huntingdon- Heberlein furnace was out of commission. The roasting works operated solely on Mungana sulphide ores and on ore from Torpy's Crooked Creek mine. The Chillian mill (No.8 ball mill) operated on the fine ores.
In 1913, the smelters operated only intermittently. The company had men cleaning flues and working in the railway workshops. Union efforts to obtain a 44-hour week were also influential in the closure. Above all, the fall in company profits determined a bleak future for the Chillagoe smelters. The receipts for 1912 were insufficient to pay even the interest on the debentures. In February 1914 J. S. Reid approached the Queensland Government for assistance. The Government refused and the company closed the smelters immediately. The mining press lamented the continual failures of the Chillagoe company in its history.
The smelters remained closed from March 1914 until January 1920. This was the World War I boom time for metal prices and other copper smelting companies, especially in the Cloncurry district, experienced the greatest prosperity they had ever known while Chillagoe was closed.
In July 1915, six weeks after the election of the Ryan-Theodore Labor Government the Chillagoe Company approached the Government about the sale of the railway. By Christmas the Government had found the possible means of funding upgrading of the smelters and mines by a mortgage over the railway. The agreement between the Queensland Government and the debenture and shareholders had to be passed by Parliament. The Legislative Council rejected the first bill and a second one was introduced in November 1917. The bill passed in November 1918, four days after the Armistice which ended the metals boom, and gave title to the Queensland Government over the railway for , smelters , Einasleigh mine , mining plant and machinery .
Peter Goddard was appointed Manager of Chillagoe smelters on 22 April 1919 for three years at a salary of per annum. The smelters were administered by the Minister for Mines under the State Enterprises Act 1918 and under the Chillagoe and Etheridge Railways Act 1918.
Smelting recommenced in January 1920 with one copper and one lead furnace in blast. The smelters settled into a steady run of seven years production, drawing their copper ore supplied from Einasleigh mine and lead ore from the Girofla mine at Mungana. Metal prices continued to decline.
The State acquired the Mungana mines in 1922 and consolidated their smelter ore supplies. In 1921, the sole remaining asset of the old Chillagoe Company, the Mount Mulligan coal mine was shut by an underground explosion which killed all 75 miners underground and finally ruined the company. It was wound up in 1923 and the State acquired the coal mine only to discover that the coke works which had been under construction for years were useless as the coal was not suitable for coking.
Ore supplies continued to be a problem after the Einasleigh mine closed in 1922 and the Girofla and Lady Jane mines were handed over to tributers in 1926. Ore came via railways in varying parcels from all over North Queensland and the Cloncurry field