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The mining town of Mary Kathleen has been reduced to a bitumen road leading into the bush about 55 km from Mt Isa and 62 km from
Cloncurry. The site is not marked but is on the northern side of the road. All that is left of the once thriving town is a series of old streets. Everything else, including all the houses have . It is now nothing more than a memory and a
Memorial Park and Museum is in
Cloncurry.
The town had two brief lives. Between 1958 and1963 a total of 4500 tonnes of uranium were produced. A world oversupply of uranium led to the
mine lying idle from 1963. It was reopened in 1974 but closed again in 1976. It was finally closed down in 1982 and the following year everything in the town from the houses to the public buildings and the equipment was put up for auction
Mary Kathleen is about half way between
Mount Isa and
Cloncurry, in far north west Queensland. The deposit was discovered in July 1954 by prospectors from nearby
Mount Isa, soon after the discovery of the nearby Skal deposit sent hundreds of prospectors madly roaming the Mt Isa and Clonclurry countryside.
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The uranium prospecting syndicate was led by Norman McConachy, Clem Walton, and included brothers Mick, Henry and John Walton, Jim Lankin, G Barnes and G Fox.They were prospecting 48
miles from Mt Isa, near the site of the old copper town of Rosebud, when they struck terrific radioactivity high on a ridge-based outcrop of conglomerate breccia. Surface indications were so rich that geiger counters went haywire - and so did the prospecting companies who came to bid for the lease.
Australian Oil Exploration Ltd was given an option over the prospect for a cash offer of $500,000, plus twenty per cent of shares of any company floated, and five per cent of any ore produced.
The prospect, now named Mary Kathleen after Norman McConachy's wife who had died of cancer only a forthnight before the strike, became world famous. The deal was headline news and it bought a sudden switch of the uranium limelight to Queensland. Dozens of companies, including most of the major concerns in the Northern Territory, sent prospecting teams rushing to the Mt Isa-Clonclurry region to stake out prospecting leases.
In 1955 Mary Kathleen Uranium Ltd was formed, with the majority of the shares held by the Rio Tinto Mining Company of Australia Limited, The remainder was held by Australian Oil Exploration Ltd.
By late 1957, however, AOEL was nearly bankrupt. Ric Dowling, one of the most powerful mining stockbrokers for the time, heard during a trip to London that AOEL were about to sell their share in MKU to RTZ. On his return to Australia Dowling sought the support of clients and associates to keep a stake in MKU in Australian hands. Kathleen Investments Ltd was floated to purchase the 35% share in MKU, controlled at the time by Roy Hudson and Ric Dowling. Kathleen Investments Ltd later acquired a 51% interest in Queensland Mines Ltd during 1965, the exploration company that found and developed the Nabarlek uranium deposit in Arnhem Land, NT.
A sales contract with the
United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority was signed in 1956. Mining commenced at the end of 1956 and the treatment plant was commissioned in June 1958. The project was developed by MKU at a cost of $24 million.
In this first phase of operation from 1958 to 1963 Mary Kathleen treated 2.9 million tonnes of ore at an average grade of 0.13% to yield 4,082 t (4,500 short tons or 9 million pounds weight of U3O8) of uranium concentrate (then actually yellowcake - ammonium diuranate) containing 3,460 tonnes of uranium.
With improvements in the treatment plant the contract was filled faster than the nine years originally envisaged, and hence in October 1963 the
mine closed and the plant was put on care and maintenance. Some 2.8 million tonnes of 0.148% ore was identified then as remaining accessible by open pit mining, containing 4,246 tonnes of uranium oxide.
The
mine remained closed for more than a decade. New contracts with utilities in Japan, Germany and USA for 4,740 tonnes of uranium oxide were negotiated early in the 1970s and recommissioning began in 1974. The company made a share issue to raise capital, and the Commonwealth Government, through the Australian Atomic Energy Commission underwrote this, thereby obtaining a 42% holding in the company. Conzinc Riotinto of Australia Limited, a successor of Rio Tinto Mining, held 51%, and the public 7%.
In the plant the ion exchange section was replaced with a more effective solvent extraction process and the
mine and mill reopened in February 1976. The cost of refurbishment was $26 million.
At the end of 1982 the
mine was depleted and finally closed down after 4,802 tonnes of uranium oxide concentrate had been produced in its second phase of operation. During the 12 years of operations about 31 million tonnes of material was mined, including 7 million tonnes of ore.
Mary Kathleen became the site of Australia's first major rehabilitation project of a uranium
mine, which was completed at the end of 1985 at a cost of some $19 million. In 1986 this work won an award from the Institution of Engineers Australia for environmental excellence.
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