Ernest Henry Copper Mine

Australia / Queensland / Mount Isa /
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To commemorate Ernest Henry's importance to the Cloncurry area, the Ernest Henry Mine, 38 kilometres north-east of Cloncurry, was named in his honour and began commercial production in 1998 as an open-pit copper mine.

On an exploring trip in the Cloncurry region in 1867, Henry found lumps of a heavy black mineral and took samples to Peak Downs, the nearest settlement inland from Rockhampton, to report and register their find. The mineral proved to be iron ore, a worthless find as the deposit was too distant from the nearest port.

Henry again returned to the Cloncurry area with his aboriginal boy, Dick, fossicking for minerals. On 20 May 1867 he found the mother lode of copper that became the Great Australian Mine. In 1876 the township of Cloncurry was laid out by Surveyor William H Bishop, the same man who laid out the township of Hughenden.

Henry worked the Great Australian Mine, bagging and exporting copper ore, until it was sold in 1879. Although the lode was rich, copper was low in value, and it was costly to cart ore to Normanton and bring stores to the mine.

In 1882 he discovered copper mines at Argylla, 50 miles west of Cloncurry, and at Mount Oxide, 90 miles from Argylla. Writing to his mother in the same year he said:

"When I first made the discovery of copper in this district there was not a white man within a hundred miles and great tracts of country lay in evey direction, unpopulated save by a few tribes of savages. At the present moment it would be difficult to find a patch of available land that has not been secured by squatters. Hitherto they have been cattlemen, but now the southern capitalists are turning their attention to our northern prairies and are introducing sheep. Sheep have always been the harbingers of prosperity to all good grazing districts."

In 1883 Tarsis Copper Smelting Company began work on the Great Australian mine. A furnace, rail tracks, rail trucks and other mining equipment were dragged from Normanton. But the mine soon closed and the furnace on the bank of the Coppermine Creek decayed into a rusty Cloncurry landmark.
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Henry_(Explorer)
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   20°26'51"S   140°43'9"E

Comments

  • Purcellman: From what I can tell this is the Ernest Henry Mine, not Cooper Mine as labelled before. Could not find anything about a Cooper Mine. If I am wrong let me know.
  • True. Not Cooper but it is Copper. The original contributor night have made a spelling mistake!
This article was last modified 10 years ago