What I was trying to imply in my previous post, but left unsaid, was the
reason behind the initiation of the "Second Rush" in mining in Australia. As
the write-up on the book in the website we have been sent by Peter says:

 

"The Second Rush is a history of the minerals boom in Australia over the
half-century from the early 1960s to the end of the China minerals boom in
2012. The earlier substantial mining boom-the gold rush of the nineteenth
century-created extraordinary prosperity. However, from 1901 to the 1950s,
with a few exceptions, mining descended into the doldrums. In the 1940s
mining was regarded as belonging to Australia's past and not to its future.
The "Second Rush" began unexpectedly from the 1960s with the development of
new export industries, the most prominent being coal, iron ore and bauxite."

 

I think, and was trying to illustrate, that the "unexpected beginning" was,
at least in part, initiated by Lang Hancock when on a trip south in 1952
flying his Auster light aircraft he is said to have made in bad weather
(including low clouds) which made him fly at low altitude over the
Hammersley range. During this he noticed the red colour of the rocks, which
induced him to go back later with a geologist and investigate. In a time
when, as I mentioned, Australia had a ban on the export of iron ore because
they thought they had few deposits, it was a significant discovery, finding
in effect a whole mountain range rich in iron ore which had been "unknown"
until that date (despite the report of the man in 1880 that "gold is
difficult to find because there is so much iron oxide").

 

I think this discovery made people wonder "If we have that huge amount of
iron ore that we didn't realise we had, what else might there be?", and that
this initiated a widespread increase in geological exploration which led to
The Second Rush described in the book.

 

As I mentioned, a geological map on sale in Sydney up to the end of 1968 (I
said I went in 1969, but since that post I have realised it was actually
December 1968) showed nothing of the iron ore in the northern part of
Western Australia. It was only as late as 1968 that new maps were being
printed, catching up with some of the new discoveries.

 

Tony Brewis

 

 


If you need to leave the list, send the following message to [log in to unmask] -

leave mining-history
---------