Devon County: Mining History

The old county of Devon stretched from the Tamar River in the east, to the Emu River in the West. Travelling west from the Tamar it included Beaconsfield/Beauty Point, Port Sorell, Latrobe, Devonport, Ulverstone and Penguin. On the southern border it included Deloraine.

Devon exhibited an extraordinary diversity of minerals, and the discovery and limited mining of high-grade iron ore in 1805 was followed by the establishment of a government lime works in 1816, and gold being found in 1847 — all at Beaconsfield — and then coal being mined at Latrobe in 1850. However it was the discovery of the world-class Mount Bischoff tin deposit just outside the county’s south- western corner that most excited speculation about the potential for world-class discoveries to be made in and around Devon.

Mount Bischoff is located at today’s Waratah, south of Burnie, and its massive cassiterite orebody was found by the great prospector Philosopher Smith in 1872. James Smith was called Philosopher, because to his neighbours he was a dreamer. He was certain that the North-West held hidden riches, and he was determined to prove it. He was certainly proved right. The Mount Bischoff find produced 56,000 tons of metal from over 5 million tons of ore, and dominated the world tin market for decades—driving tin miners in Britain out of the industry.

When the Philosopher first reported his find, he had difficulty in convincing investors to stump up the substantial capital he needed to develop a mine out in the wilderness. People thought it was just another dream. His friend T C Just, editor of the Cornwall Chronicle, was a great proselytiser of the mineral potential of northern Tasmania, but couldn’t persuade Melbourne investors to back it. Finally Launceston solicitor William Ritchie managed to float a local company for him, and one of the world’s great mining companies was born.

The pioneers were not hopeless optimists when they sank fortunes into iron ore at Bea- consfield and Penguin, asbestos at York Town, silver and tungsten at Penguin, copper near Burnie and Port Sorell, shale oil, lime and coal at Devonport, and other enterprises. Most of the extraordinarily diverse mineral occurrences in Devon proved to be small — but Mount Bischoff, and then Beaconsfield, proved that great riches could be found if you had a dream.

Tramway to the Penguin iron mine

Iron

The early settlers of Australia were not encouraged to search for mineral wealth. In partular, it was believed by the authorities that the discovery of gold would be bad for discipline, and would divert scarce resources from essential endeavours such as agriculture. However when Lt-Governor William Paterson settled at York Town on the west bank of the Tamar in 1805, he couldn’t help but find limestone, serpentine, asbestos and other minerals. In particular, he found high-grade iron ore west of today’s Beaconsfield. He set a convict team to mining bulk samples, and sent some home to England to be smelted, where it was found to be the best ore they had ever seen! His sample graded at around 70% iron, double the local ores, and produced metal equal to Swedish pig—the industry benchmark.

Beaconsfield was the first iron ore discovery made in Australia, but Paterson’s find wasn’t developed until 1872, when local newspaper proprietor T C Just floated the Tasmanian Charcoal Iron Co. This became the biggest and most modern iron smelter of the 19th Century, not just in Tasmania, but in the Southern Hemisphere. It also triggered the construction of other smelters in the area. Unfortunately it failed because chromium in the ore made the pig too brittle. Chromium had never been heard of in iron ore before, but the honour of this find, which was also the first find of chromium in Australia, did not compensate Tom Just for the collapse of his great and pioneering company. Ironically, it was discovered in 1915 that adding chromium and nickel to iron made stainless steel.

While the production of pig iron failed, the iron deposits of North-West Tasmania remained a tantalising prospect for miners. Philosopher Smith had found magnetite on the Blythe River near today’s Ferndene Reserve in the Dial Range, near Penguin, in the 1860s, and there was known to be a major deposit at Savage River, near Mount Bischoff.

In the 1880s there was an unsuccessful attempt to exploit the Penguin iron. Then a favourable report on the deposit by the Tasmanian Government Geological Surveyor in 1895 renewed interest, and in 1897 the Tasmanian Iron Co was formed in Sydney to open cut and deliver high-grade iron ore, with low impurities, for an iron and steel works in NSW. Production peaked in 1905, but the labour-intensive mining and horse-drawn tramway winding for miles down to Penguin, over 25 bridges, proved uneconomic. Production ceased in 1909 after shipping 6,500 tons. The mine reopened in the 1960s, but on a small scale and did not last.

The Savage River magnetite deposit that was discovered in the 1870s was unable to be ac- cessed until much later, but proved to be a more significant and profitable producer. Opened in 1967, it is still producing today. Some 4 million tons of ore a year are mined, crushed, mixed with water and sent to Port Latte on the coast, between Wynyard and Stanley, by a remarkable 83km long pipeline. At Port Latte there is a gas-fired pelletising plant, which converts the magnetite slurry to high-purity and low-contaminant pellets for Port Kembla and Chinese, South Korean and Japanese steel furnaces.

Hyraulic sluicing for gold

Gold

The 1830s and 1840s were a long period of depression in Tasmania. Melbourne and Geelong had been founded by Launces- tonians in 1835, and all the energies of the island went to developing these northern colonies of Launceston. The general malaise was exacerbated in the 1850s by our fit and enterprising men being lured to the Victorian gold rush, but there was some compensation later as these men came home again with experience and skills in mining. Many were convinced that northern Tasmania could make their fortunes, and scoured the bush prospecting.

There is strong evidence that gold was found at Beaconsfield in 1847 by a man working at the Tamar Lime Works. No-one at that time had any experience with gold. They thought it was pyrite, and the discovery wasn’t followed up. In June 1877 a man named William Dally stumbled across a fabulous reef on top of Cabbage Tree Hill at what is now Beaconsfield. He called it the Tasmania Reef, and it was the richest discovery anywhere in Australia in the period between the Ballarat gold rush of the 1850s and the Kalgoorlie rush of the 1890s. The surface ore carried kilos, not ounces, to the ton, and the rock was so weathered that it could be smashed with a shovel and lumps of gold picked out “like blackberries off the bush”.

Within just a few months the mine had made everyone asso- ciated with it wealthy, and before long Beaconsfield was the third largest town in Tasmania. Some 300 mines sprung up on Cabbage Tree Hill and its sister hill to the south, Salisbury Hill. Immediately north of Beaconsfield another town grew up at around the Port of Beaconsfield, and while initially called Ilfracombe, it is known today as Beauty Point. There was a settlement around the huge battery and treatment works to the south too, but it was never named and disap- peared when the mine closed in 1914.

The Tasmania mine produced 2,000,000oz over the two periods of its economic life, 1887-1914 and 1999-2012. There is plenty of gold still there of course, but the mine was already at 1.2km depth when it closed, and it simply wasn’t profitable to continue. Erosion of the hill that hosted the reef created a major alluvial field that underlies all of Beaconsfield today. This provided employment for hundreds of miners for years, and it is believed that a deep lead of about 3 ounces a ton still exists under the town’s main street at a depth of at least 60m.

The importance of Mount Bischoff and Beaconsfield to Tasmania cannot be understated. They pulled Tasmania out of its long depression and largely made the city of Launceston that you see today. There is gold throughout Devon and across Tasmania. Most creeks and many beaches will give colour on panning. Around Ulverstone, Buttons Creek and the Gawler River have yielded alluvial gold in the past.

Beaconsfield may have closed, but there is a tailings treatment project planned there, and south- west of Mount Bischoff, the Henty Gold Mine is still operating, though it is scheduled to close this year. The Rosebery multimetal mine on the west coast produces substantial quantities of gold as a byproduct of its zinc/lead/silver/copper recoveries, and the Mt Lyell copper mine at Queenstown started life as a gold mine.

Lime

One of the difficulties encountered by the first settlers at Sydney was the failure to find limestone. Without limestone there was no mortar, concrete or renders and large structures had a tendency to collapse in high winds. Some lime was made from roasting shells, but the supply was very limited. The first usable limestone in Australia was found at Sorrento when Port Phillip Bay was first settled in 1803, but when that settlement failed and was relocated to Hobart, the supply of lime also failed.

Colonel Paterson, the Governor of Cornwall (northern Tasmania) discovered limestone at Beaconsfield in December 1805, and when the supply of shells from huge Aboriginal middens at Beauty Point and Kelso ran out, the first government lime works was established on Middle Arm near Beaconsfield in 1816.

In the years since then, limestone has been found at many sites and many mining operations established. The Melrose-Eugenana limestone deposits south of Devonport have been mined almost continuously since 1851, including by BHP and later by Goliath Cement (now Cement Australia), who are still there.

Flowery Gully, near Beaconsfield, still produces limestone today, and the deposits there and at Beaconsfield were known in the past for the beautiful marbles they produced, only to be roasted for lime. The stone from the Government Lime Works site was noteable for being where the first fossil species was found and described in Australia.

Cuprona copper mine

Copper

Copper is another element that occurs at various sites around Devon, but has never been found in an economic deposit. Reports of copper in the early days were quick to excite the Tasmanian public imagination because of the wealth that had come out of South Australia after its copper discoveries of the 1840s. When copper was then found in New South Wales as well, local punters were primed to jump onto any Tasmanian copper float that had a good story to tell. Copper mines were developed at Badger Head (near Port Sorell), Frankford, Beaconsfield, Penguin and at Cuprona (near Burnie).

The first significant occurrence discovered was of chalcopyrite on the beach at Badger Head in 1877, and this led to the formation of the Tasmanian Copper Co and three years of underground mining in search of an economic lode. While there were veins of rich ore, they never widened to a mineable lode and the company collapsed in acrimony. The sacked mining manager said there was “not enough copper to make a kettle”.

In 1879 William Dally, the man who found the Tasmania Reef at Beaconsfield, found a rich vein of copper at Saxon’s Creek at Frankford, south of Beaconsfield. This led to the Pandora Mine which, like at Badger Head, always held the promise of a rich lode, but despite extensive underground searching, never delivered a vein wide enough to be profitably mined. It existed in a number of incarnations over decades, and as one government geologist said, always gave just enough to keep people interested and investing.

In 1882 the Rising Sun gold mine at Beaconsfield came on a rich lode of copper, and fol- lowed it into the bowels of the earth in the hope of finding something significant, but once again, the miners hopes were never realised. That same year a mine was developed at Myrtle Creek, 2km south of Penguin beach, by the Devon Consols Copper Mining Company. This mine failed, but was interesting for the long hexagonal hairs of native copper in the ore.

Probably the best chance was at Cuprona, southeast of Burnie, only a kilometre from the Blythe iron mine. It certainly led to the most grandiose expectations. The copper was found in 1907 by a local farmer, Aubrey Sice, and was profitably mined by him and his brother and brother-in-law for a few months under the name Copper King mine. Dreams of it becoming another Mount Lyell (Queenstown) led to a public float, with claims that it was “destined to become one of the most valuable assets of our island.” Assays up to 33% copper were returned, but as all prospectors know, hand-picked samples that give huge assay results almost never reflect the true value of an orebody!

Meanwhile, another copper show had been found on the Blythe Iron Co block, on the other side of the river next door, and amid speculation that the two occurrences were part of the same major orebody at depth, the share price skyrocketed. The miners set to work, with dreams of wealth and poetry on their lips: “Where the eucalypt is blooming, Where the river gorge is glooming, Came the mine and mill and fluming, And a wondrous change.”

Townships with euphonious names sprung up - Cuprona and Ellenton - and land prices rocketed. But it was not to be. They sank and drove, but the ore was not there. It had been only a surface phenomenon after all.

Mine head of Neptune Silver Mine, Penguin

Silver

Penguin was settled as a timber town in 1861, exporting large quantities of timber to the goldfields of Victoria, but there were no roads in the area and access was solely by sea, which limited exploration and development. That same year Philosopher Smith found galena and copper minerals over a long stretch of the foreshore, from one to three kilome- tres from Penguin Creek.

With the inaccessibility of most mineral occurrences in Tasmania, finding a potential ore-body on the beach seemed a godsend, until Smith found that it was not possible to get a lease on a foreshore.

After years of lobbying, made difficult by the need to keep the find a secret, a lease was finally obtained and Smith and his partners could move forward. They formed the Devon Mining Co Ltd, secured 180 acres under lease, and sank a prospecting shaft located on the beach, one mile from the Penguin jetty. They sank to 10ft, and obtained a sample which assayed at 100oz of silver a ton.

The vein was just 4 inches at the surface, but widened to 4ft at 10ft depth. Then in April 1870 they floated the Penguin Silver Mines Co with a capital of £60,000 and sold the venture into the float. The mine seemed so sure, that they only needed to release a quarter of the shares to the public.

Just 100ft west of the shaft was a gossan which was tested and assayed at 100oz silver a ton, and 3% copper oxide. It exhibited native silver and copper. 100ft east was a galena gossan which assayed at 71% lead and 19oz a ton silver! Within weeks there was general store and a hotel at the site, and the people of Penguin were beside themselves with excitement. Further assays returned up to 240oz a ton of silver with other metal credits including gold and hopes were high.

A shaft was sunk just above the high-water mark (now below high-tide), prospecting holes dug around the area (including below the waterline) and a steam crushing plant ordered. Surprisingly, even though the north drive was under the sea, water influx was not a big problem and the whim shown in the painting above was able to keep the mine dry. Sadly though, the ore proved to be in numerous narrow veins and pockets which never merged into a large body, and the venture failed in 1871.

Three Government Geological Surveyors examined the prospect over following years, and the first two thought it reasonably likely that all the veins would merge at depth into one large orebody. In 1882 the Neptune mine was developed adjacent to Penguin Silver on their east side, and did much shaft and drive work, but folded the following year. The Neptune mine was pumped out and mined again in 1884, but failed a few years later. A local tried again unsuccessfully during World War I. The Penguin Silver Mine was dewatered and cleaned out by a Melbourne group in 1898 without success. Then a third official report was pessimistic and no work done subsequently.

Silver/lead deposits were also discovered at Mt Roland and Mt Claude near Sheffield in the early 1870s. Round Hill, a spur of the Mt Claude range, was first mined in 1872, and then again in 1883 by the Mt Claude Company. It was refloated as the Southern Cross but failed in 1890s depression, then reopened as the Round Hill Silver Lead Co in 1907 and ran for many years.

Tungsten

The older generation will remember the Poseidon and Tasminex hysterias of the 1960s. Both companies floated as 25 cent shares in October 1969 as nickel speculations, and when both reported strikes in Western Australia a few weeks later, their shares skyrocketed. Poseidon went from 25c to $200 and Tasminex to $96, on absurd interpretations of their orebodies and projections of their financial prospects — encouraged in Tasminex’s case by their Chairman. In the latter’s case, when assays came back, they didn’t have any appreciable nickel at all.

Poseidon went bust, but Tasminex was fortunate to find a small magnetite/scheelite show at Kara, 29km southwest of Burnie, and in 1978 opened a small open cut mine. Under their current name Tasmania Mines Ltd, they produce around 250,000t of magnetite a year for the Austral- ian coal washing market, and 50,000t of high-grade scheelite for the European specialty steel industry.

Sheelite also occurs on King Island, which was also part of the old County Devon. The discovery at Grassy, on the southeast corner of the island in 1904 was the first significant mining development of the new century in Tasmania. Established in 1915, the mine operaed intermittently until its final clo- sure in 1990. There is a plan to reopen the mine.

Shail Oil and Coal

The Mersey Coalfield extends from Spreyton, 5km south of Devonport, to Railton, and was discovered on the river at Tarleton at the beginning of 1851. Coal seams and specimens are visible in the Don River, and early in that year, travellers en route from the Leven River to Launceston were forced to stop for the night at the camp of two burly paling splitters near the Don. They noticed that the campfire was burning coal. For 5 gold sovereigns the timbermen showed them where the coal was located and the travellers immediately bought a huge 690ha property covering the area between the Mersey and Don Riv- ers. The Mersey Coal Co was established in Launceston shortly afterwards.

The coal is of early Permian origin and is low in ash but high in sulphur. It is found in thin and faulted seams up to 600mm thick. The discovery was reported to the Royal Society of Van Diemen’s Land at their March 1851 meeting. The Mersey Coal Co began operations in 1853 digging shafts and building tramways, and spent £20,000, but failed to make a commercial proposition of it and wound up in 1857.

In the meantime, a famous Welsh coalminer named Zephaniah Williams (transported for treason and then pardoned) had become interested, and formed his own company in 1853. He found many outcrops within the field, and operated as the Denison Colliery from 1855, constructing a jetty on the Mersey and getting the government to put a road in, but then he also folded in 1859. High quality coal in a more substantial seam was discovered at Fingal, east of Launceston, in 1863 and the inability of anyone to create a profitable and permanent operation on the Mersey coalfield gave the opportunity for Fingal to develop. Coal is mined there today.

Many mines were established around Latrobe over the years, including the Alfred and Don Collieries 1855-83, Aberdeen Co 1931-5 and the Novelty Coal Co in 1938-9. The Illamatha Collieries ran intermittently from 1901 to 1961, but with their closure the field was abandoned for good. The prospecting for coal in 1851 immediately led to the discovery of a “combustible shale”, and it was soon realised that a belt of oil shale, of late carboniferous origin and unrelated to the local coal deposits, stretched from Latrobe to Quamby Brook.

Oil shale was regarded as a curiosity in the 19th century, and even as late at 1903 a Royal Commission doubted that oil would ever replace coal as a fuel, though it was useful for laying down dust on roads. However this did not stop the formation of the Tasmanian Shale and Oil Co by Adelaide speculators, and active prospecting by them was undertaken from around 1901. Early in the 20th Century it became apparent that oil was more than just a dust-settler and lubricant, and submarines and locomotives were highly public users. The Tasmanian Shale and Oil Co NL commenced actual mining in June 1910 at China Flats, on the river 4km south of Latrobe, and were joined soon after by the Latrobe Shale and Oil Co NL. Tasmanian Shale and Oil built retorts to produce 20 tons of oil, but closed in 1914.

With the announcement of a reward for a payable oilfield in 1920, there was much interest in the oil shale. The Tasmanian Cement Co built a retort and mined in the 1920s to provide fuel for their cement works at Railton, but it wasn’t practical. Up to 1935 many other companies, notably the Australian Shale Oil Co (1924-7), tried to produce oil, mainly at the Great Bend on the Mersey River near Latrobe, but only about 360,000 gallons were retorted in total. Interest has continued to the present day, but no viable operation has ever been established.

Ochre

Ochres occur at a number of sites around the Tamar Valley. The most significant resources being in the form of chromic iron oxides at Andersons Creek, near Beaconsfield, where they occur in association with the secondary iron deposits and have been utilised in the past on a small scale. Another resource is in the gravel reserve immediately north of Beaconsfield on the Green’s Beach Road.

The principal deposit is on Scott’s Hill, next to Anderson’s Creek, and is a multi-coloured ochre with needles of magnetite. Goethite is also present. The deposit was first mined in 1872 as a trial feed for the local iron smelter, and some sent to England. Sampling undertaken about 1887 indicated that the oxides were suitable for the manufacture of oxide paints and in 1888 the Chromate, Asbestos, Paint and Gold Mining Company Limited was formed to work the deposits.

This company did not survive and the property was taken over in 1892 by the Native Paint and Oxide Company, who also took up the property on Green’s Beach Road. A mill was erected and over the next two years some 500 tons of oxides were produced from Scott’s Hill and 1,000 tons from the gravel reserve, principally for gas purification.

No further interest was taken in the deposits until the Anderson Creek leases were taken over by the Serpentine Paint Company in 1918. A paint factory was established in Launceston and production recommenced on the old workings on the flank of Scott’s Hill. Operations continued on a small scale until 1928.

The workings are still accessible and consist of a long narrow open cut approximately 4 m wide by 75 m long, at GPS S410 11.468’ E1460 45.526’. The cut was driven from about creek level to a face some 8 metres in depth. Early testing indicated ore a further 4-5m below the floor of the cut. The deposits occur as a surface mantle covering the flanks of both Scott’s Hill and Mount Vulcan and where exposed in the workings are highly variable in colour. Yellow, red, green and brown layering is prominent, and enabled the paint company to make 30 different paint shades. The oxides are mostly fine-grained with only minor grit or pebble material.

Local resident Nigel Burch (TLMA treasurer) was intrigued that no reference on Aboriginal ochre sites mentioned any location in the Tamar Valley, and consulted one of Tasmania’s foremost authorities on Aboriginal history, and took him to the Scott’s Hill site. It seemed un- believable that what was apparently the best ochre deposit in Tasmania, and located on the surface, would be unknown and unutilised by Aboriginals.

The expert agreed, and has written a paper on the subject. It seems probable that Scott’s Hill would have been an important source (and perhaps the premier source) of the colouring material for indigenous cultural use, and that the speed at which the local indigenous popula- tion disappeared led to the site being complete- ly forgotten. Text: Devon Council