TOD Tour, Day 102 - Mount Morgan

The Mount Morgan Mine

After a hectic few weeks and the changes of plans wrought by family health issues, coupled with the inordinately long drive yesterday, I decided to take today off from the return home and just chill.

My morning was one of leisure activities which included reading, after which I was ready to wander to the local supermarket and replenish the grocery stock for the last few days until home. I couldn't find a coffee, although the newsagent - go figure - was highly recommended but unfortunately, they didn't stock decaf.

The hospitality of the Silver Wattle Caravan Park includes the provision of four fresh eggs ... real ones from free chickens ... so with the new supply of bacon and bread, I had two bacon and egg sandwiches for lunch.

In the afternoon, I caught up with the main tourist attraction in Mount Morgan, John Steinberger's TMC Tours. It's the only way to go inside the fences and see the Mount Morgan Mine, which at one stage was the richest mine producing site in Australia. Mining started here in 1882, when three enterprising hoteliers, the Morgan Brothers, convinced some investors to form a syndicate and take out a mining lease on Ironstone Mountain. Four years later, the syndicate became the Mount Morgan Mining Company and it operated by digging shafts and tunnels under the mountain which had been renamed in honour of Thomas, Edwin and Frederick Morgan. By 1907, the mine had produced $60 million in gold, created a town and installed a railway line from Rockhampton. At that stage, its population of fifteen thousand was three times greater than its coastal rival and it was one of the top three gold producing mines in the world.

Conditions for the men working in the mine were poor and with depression looming in the late 1920's and gold prices falling, a bitter industrial dispute engulfed the mine. The long conflict ended when a fire broke out in the tunnels and the mine was flooded to extinguish it. The company went into liquidation soon after and the population of Mount Morgan halved during the next few years, many of the workers taking their houses with them, mostly to the coastal towns of Rockhampton and Yeppoon.

The "head" which used to take men
into the mine the down the
longest staircase in the world

In 1928, the Mine was reopened as Mount Morgan Ltd and adopted the new method of stepped open cut mining and the focus became silver and copper. The last of the original ores taken from the mine were in 1981 and then the company reworked the tailings under a new processing which recovered ores not extracted under previous methods. After the mine closed in 1990, the Qld Government began administrating it in 1992. Carbine Resources are the latest company to show an interest in reviving the mine, with a project to extract the approximately eight and a half thousand kg of gold estimated to still be there. If so, the fifty workers they would employ, mostly locals, would be a boast to the town.

TMC Tours - town, mine, caves - are the only tour operators with a licence to visit the mine site and John Steinberger takes folks around the town and onto the mine site twice a day, including school groups. After a drive through Mount Morgan and then out to the town's water supply - the large dam on the Dee River that we lunched at when we were here last month - we were taken to the mine and given an extensive narrative of the history and operation of the mine. John is an interesting fella, with the ever present terminal "eh" on the end of sentences as though all of life is a question.

He has lots of information to share: Mount Morgan once had 27 pubs (now there are four); the town was settled as eleven different communities which residents still adhere to today in describing where they live in town; the bell at the defunct Scouts hall was made from sixty thousand pennies collected by school children durign the Boer War; the place is full of fruit trees both in number and variety; the dam, currently at 96%, is restocked every year with Yellowbelly fingerlings; there were once six suspension bridges over the Dee; the Leichhardt Hotel is the oldest remaining pub at 127 years old; and it goes on and on.

Happy Hour at the Silver Wattle
(photo courtesy of their Facebook page)

Frankly, he can tell you much more than you can take in, even if your stayed here a week and went twice a day. Every hundred metres of the town part of the tour there was a new landmark and a story to be told. For instance, the public toilets, located in the middle of the main street, were built as an air raid shelter from Japanese bombers during WWII. The man is a font.

Bamboozled with information - Google be damned - I retreated to the Silver Wattle and "happy hour"; a gathering hosted by owners Sarah and Mark and Sarah's mum! They supply the fire, the chairs and some tucker and guests gather around for the best sundowners you'll have on the road. I read a few of my poems and had some great conversations.

It was just the day I needed to refresh myself.

TOD Tour, Day 64 - Mt Morgan

Camp Kitchen

Our night and subsequent day at Mt Morgan were very pleasant.

Absolute cracker of a caravan park. The Silver Wattle Caravan Park, just a small, family run business, owned and run by a young couple who have travelled about Australia and gathered all the ideas they liked best and tried to put them into their own park.

As I say, it's small ... a few cabins and twenty five sites ... but it's fabulous. The amenities were clean and really well maintained ... you turned the lights on and off like it was your bathroom at home. When we arrived, we were told to pick a spot we liked, given four huge eggs from their chickens and a ten minutes description of what there was to do in Mt Morgan and a potted history of the place. The camp kitchen had a full size fridge/freezer, microwave, gas bbq, tv, cutlery, plates, cups, spoons, toaster, electric kettle, condiments, tea towels ... and a pizza oven! There is a constant feeling of brightness about the place and owners, Sarah and Mark, are improving the place daily. Old cabins are being demolished and new ones put in their place.

It was all built into the style of an old shearers hut, with authentic slabs and corrugated iron roof. At one end was a camp fire ring, which they apologised for not firing up at night, where they normally have happy hour and shout guests nibblies! Outside the camp kitchen is a herb garden and beside it a vegetable garden which are there for guests to pick fresh produce from!

The owners dropped in during dinner to see if we needed anything.

The next morning, Sue got acquainted with their miniature horse which they bought on Gumtree. It had looked bigger in the photos. It is used as their lawn mower and provides fertiliser for the veggie garden.

All of this, plus a powered, level, shared site in return for $25 a night and a weekly rate which translates to a bit over $18 a night. The best value on the road in all the hundreds of thousands of kilometres we have travelled around Australia since 1978. 

This morning, after bacon and eggs which were nearly two centimetres thick, we went into Mt Morgan, starting at the two look outs. The town has been built in a shallow bowl between and including short, sharp hills, through which the Dee River flows. It exists because gold was mined here from 1882. Silver and copper have also been mined in profitable quantities. The post office opened in 1885 and is one of the very substantial buildings in this heritage listed town. Like Mount Isa, only on a much smaller scale, the town is dominated by the now dormant mine which occupies its western side.

Mt Morgan Railway Museum

Mt Morgan is also important for the establishment of the railway line in 1898, at the behest of the mine which had transported gold by wagons down the rough track off the steep range and across the plain to Rockhampton to the north. The track, built up the mountain called Razorback, included a Swiss breaking system which used a notched rack which was laid beside the rails and special bogies fitted between the wheels with ratchet wheels which locked into the rack race. The climb and descent was so steep, it was the only way of making sure a lack of traction didn't occur in heavily laden trains. An example of the system is on display at the Railway museum ... along with some interesting photos, railway associated paraphernalia and a few examples of rolling stock.

The town has some very interesting buildings.

The first state secondary school in Qld still stands on the Burnett Highway, which runs through the centre of town. A tall, two storey building constructed of sturdy brick, despite being 103 years old, still looks as though it could last several more hundred years.

The School of Arts is the biggest public hall I have ever seen in rural Australia, with a full stage, an upstairs balcony with seating to view the stage and a high, high ceiling. It has been recently painted and looks in great nick.

Across the road is what used to be a pub but is now a private residence. It has a turret on the top which was used as a spotter's tower during WWII so that Mt Morgan would have an early warning if Japanese soldiers came over the range ... no, I haven't been drinking.

There are several murals painted on buildings depicting early life in My Morgan and their public toilet block is in the middle of the main street ... not halfway along ... I actually mean in the middle of the street. Perhaps that's because of all the drinking which used to happen in a town that once had 27 pubs and where beer used to be fetched in billy cans (cutters) and run out to the mine at the end of a shift. Every year, the tradition continues with a relay race for four runners who carry a cutter of beer between the remaining four pubs, with final runner chugging the cutter.

We went out to "The Big Dam" for lunch, which was, surprisingly enough, a big dam and the source of the town's water supply.

Themed shopping at
Rockhampton

Having been told of the treacherous road which finishes the climb up the Mt Morgan Range and then descends the Burnett Highway down to the plain and Rockhampton, we set out with some degree of trepidation: me with none, Sue with maybe 3 degrees. After all, the lady at the railway museum won't drive it, for fear of her very life ... not life ... no, no ... more important than that ... her VERY life.

All a bit of a fizzer really. Speed limit of 40km/hr. Lots of tight bends and a steep road. I just placed the cruise control on 40 and steered the car down the hill without touching the brake pedal once. Technology 1, steep mountain road 0.

We went on to Rockhampton, settled in,  did some shopping, planning, eating, laughing (it was Micallef night).