A day trip to Kuridala.

Kuridala is an abandoned mining town approximately 70km south of Cloncurry and is located in the northern foothills of the Selwyn Ranges where many copper ore deposits were discovered around 1884. It wasn't until 1887 that the Hampton Mining Company bought the copper deposit and at that stage the town was known as Gulatten briefly, before being named Friezland. By 1905 world copper prices were climbing rapidly and mining began. The railway reached Cloncurry in 1907 and the Hampton Mining Company along with the Mount Elliot Mining Company at Selwyn a little further south, lobbied the Queensland government to extend the railway to the proposed Hampton smelter at the Friezland site. The line eventually arrived in 1910 and the smelter completed in 1911. Copper prices continued to rise and as WW1 started demand rose as well. The German sounding name of the town created a great deal angst for residents and was renamed Kuridala during the war. At it's height Kuridala boasted 2000 residents, 6 pubs, ice works, printer, several shops, hospital, 2 churches a School of Arts  and a primary school with about 280 students. The smelter grew and grew as more small mines populated the area and sent their ore to Kuridala for processing, copper was worth 112 pounds per ton and the smelter was receiving 70,000 tons of ore for processing per year and in the peak year of 1917, 120,000 tons were received. By wars end copper prices were falling and there was no end insight, in 1920 copper prices collapsed and the end of the mining and the town, by 1924 the population was 774 and 1933 only 64 people called Kuridala home. The township was dismantled and some of the buildings began a new life in the new mining area of Mt Isa, the hospital, picture theatre, court house and ice works all went to Mt Isa, the rail line survived until 1961 and then was closed and removed. Mining has resumed at Selwyn and they have recently been test drilling in the Kuridala area again.

On the Duchess Dajarra Road about 20km south of Cloncurry. The Cloncurry Mt Isa rail line just in the bush.



Remnants of the Hampton-Consols copper mine.

The Kuridala Cemetery is an amazing place, situated just down the road from where the hospital used to be.The navman showed a network of roads that used to be the township.

This book beside the gate tells all about the inhabitants of the cemetery, who they are and how they died. Very few people in here over the age of 50.

An A frame over an old mine shaft at Hampton-Consols mine.

Stack at Hampton-Consols and another shaft in front of it. We picked up heaps of Pyrite(Fools gold) nuggets, they look so real.

Base of the stack, the plaque above me reads 1913.

Mullock heap.

 Another A frame above a very large shaft to the left of the car. This one is flashy lined in concrete.

Trying to clear the track into the smelter site.

Finally found our way to the smelter site, we could see the stacks just couldn't find the track.

Base of the Hampton Smelter stack.

A line of converter drums at the smelter site.

An old winch probably used to haul ore into the blast furnace in rail trucks.

The old slag dump at the back of the blast furnace.

The slag dump is all like this and shines in the sun, very strange looking stuff.

Looking south east from the back of the blast furnace.

The Blast Furnace.

 You can see the Hampton-Consols stack in the distance.

The remains of the ramp the ore rail trucks used to feed the smelter.

About another 8km further on from the Kuridala site is a place they call the Amethyst Fields. A fairly rough narrow track leads into the public area where fossicking is permitted. We came across these two fellas having a big dig for Amethyst, they were about 2 metres down and half a metre in when we saw them, they say they had found a seam of Amethyst and were pulling out plenty.

I asked the old fella down the hole about his safety in case of a cave in, it didn't look real safe to me, but he assured me that if it did cave in he would die a happy man.

This is some of the Amethyst they were pulling up.

There were a lot of dry creek crossings and gate or two along the way to the fields.

Turn off to Kuridala, the old township and ruins are just behind us.

 This old truck is beside the railway line at a place called Mittakoodi. There used to be a station here many years ago, I have been going to come here to get a photo of this old truck for some time. We then followed the rail line back to the Duchess road through the Mittakoodi gorge where some people come to camp and then home.