Former Powder Magazine (c1875)

Moonta MInes. The ruins of the Moonta Mines powder or expl… | Flickr | Moonta Mines and the Hughes Enginehouse. After the May 1861 race between Hughes’ man William Horn and Patrick Ryan and his associates to register the Moonta mining lease a lengthy legal process began for the validation of Walter Watson Hughes’ his mining rights to the site. Although the legal battle was not settled until 1864 Hughes acted quickly and formed the Tipara Mineral Association, later the Moonta Mining association, with himself, Edward Stirling, John Taylor, Robert Barr Smith, (Sir)Thomas Elder, G Waterhouse and G. Hall. Hundreds of Cornish miners were attracted to the town directly from Cornwall although some came from Kapunda. The government resumed some parts of Hughes’ pastoral lease to lay out the towns of Kadina and the port of Wallaroo. Moonta was surveyed and town blocks sold in April 1863. As they sold quickly most Moonta settlers lived in cottages and shanties on the mining leasehold lands in settlements such as Hamley Flat, Moonta Mines, Yelta, Cross Roads etc. By 1870 the population of Moonta reached 10,000 people with 6,000 on the mining lease lands. Coal was shipped in to the Moonta mines from Newcastle as it was needed to fire the boiler houses and the water pumps for the mine. The copper lodes were up to 700 metres below the surface although most worked lodes were less than 300 metres below the surface and the main lodes were named Elder’s lode, Elder West lode, Beddomes lode, Greens lode and Fergusson lode. Each lode had one or more deep shafts with the main ones being Washington’s shaft, Stirling’s shaft, Taylor’s shaft, and Hughes’ shaft etc. There were a number of enginehouses across Moonta mines Hughes’s, Richman’s and Elder’s. Hughes enginehouse had Smith’s (Robert Barr Smith), Hughes, Elders, Duncan and Bennetts shafts nearby. Next to the enginehouse was the boilerhouse which created steam for the enginehouse which pumped water out of the deep shafts. Nearby was a winching house to winch items and miners down the shafts but mainly to bring ore to the surface. Nearby were the settling tanks for water pumped from the shafts, the concentration plant and the crushing plant. These processes and structures were needed near most mine shafts. Also near Hughes enginehouse were the stables and the workshops for the repair and in some cases manufacture of equipment etc. 300 men and boys were employed in Hughes workshops alone. The Hughes’ engine house serviced Smith’s, Waterhouse’s and Elder’s shafts and others and it was primarily responsible to pumping water out of mine shafts. Hughes 60 inch Cornish beam pumping engine was installed in a fine stone building in 1865 and it operated continuously without any major break down from then until the mine closure in 1923. It required constant works to keep fire up to the boilers. It could pump water from as depth of 700 metres (2,500 feet) with four strokes of the pump a minute. Near this main shaft were workshops, the mine offices, the manager’s residence (Captain Hancock) etc. In other areas of the mine works were the brick kiln, the assay office, the powder magazine, processing plants and several major areas for the tailings debris bought to the surface from the mine shafts. The Hughes enginehouse was built of limestone and still remains without the pump. Near it are the ruins of Elder’s enginehouse, the Hughes water pool or reservoir. Captain Hancock managed the Hughes’ mines from 1864 to 1898. Under his management the mine grew quickly with 1,200 men and boys employed as early as 1865. Across the main road are the remains of Richman’s enginehouse, Richman’s Tailings Heap which can be climbed, the compressor house and the crushing plant etc. Richman’s enginehouse which was built from 1867 to 1869 was mainly used to power the crushing and dressing machinery of Taylor’s Shaft the deepest shaft on the Moonta fields. Taylor’s shaft which descended 2,520 feet beneath the surface had its water pumped out by the Hughes enginehouse from some distance away. The ruins of the crushing and concentrating plants beside Taylor’s shaft are quite impressive. Some of the ruins of the crusher house erected in 1869 in local stone remain beside Richman’s enginehouse. All mining required explosives, mainly gun powder and later dynamite, and the ruins of the Moonta Mines explosives magazine still exist near the old state Moonta Mines School. In 1890 the Wallaroo and Moonta Mines amalgamated. The combined companies employed on average around 1,900 people a year in the mines and smelters. The peak year for employment was 1906 when the company hired 2,700 men. This followed a disastrous fire in 1904 when the large Taylor Shaft and poppet was destroyed by fire. There were three main shafts operating at the Wallaroo Mines by 1906, the Boors, Hughes and Office shafts. Between 1860 and 1923 when the mine finally closed down the Wallaroo Mine alone produced almost £10,000 million worth of copper and the combined mine with Moonta produced over £20,000 million worth of copper. After the closure of the mine buildings were stripped of anything saleable and most were demolished. As the population dwindled the cottages on the mining lease land were generally demolished also but a few still remain. At Moonta Mines a few non-mining buildings remain the government school (1877-1968) now the National Trust Museum, Moonta Mines Methodist Church (1865) with a seating capacity of 1,250 parishioners and a typical miner’s cottage (1870) now a National Trust museum.