The money comes, the money goes
Where’s it all gone?
I’m sure you’ve had this experience. The money you had in your wallet this morning has evaporated during the day, leaving you lighter around the hip pocket and foggier than ever about where it all went. It happens to me most days. And if that’s how we feel about the few bucks we usually call our own, consider how the citizens of Mt Morgan in Queensland must feel.
Over the hundred years or so the local mine operated, it produced some 262 tonnes of gold, worth about AU$7,961,656,000 at current spot prices. It had the reputation of being the biggest mountain of gold anywhere in the world. That’s not including the 37 tonnes of silver and 387,000 tonnes of copper it also yielded. And yet today, Mt Morgan looks as though a strong wind would blow it away. Just as very little money seems to stick to your wallet and mine, so very little of the precious metal has stuck to the town.
Except insofar as there is now serious contamination of the town’s groundwater and the Dee River “for significant distances downstream” from severe acid rock drainage, with high levels of dissolved heavy metals and salts. Mining is rarely without long-term effects and sometimes they can be grim.
The Mt Morgan gold mine began to operate in 1882 to recover gold. “The Mount Morgan Gold Mining Company Ltd controlled the mining leases between 1886 and 1927,” says a Queensland government website. “The company went into liquidation in 1927 following a disastrous underground fire and deliberate flooding of the workings in 1925. The company was reformed as Mount Morgan Limited (MML) in 1928. MML began open-cut mining in 1932 and, by the time mining ceased in 1981, more than 145 mega tonnes of ore and overburden had been handled.
“Between 1982 and 1990, a tailings re-treatment process operated whereby 30 mega tonnes of final wastes were pumped into the flooded open cut …
“Following the cessation of mining and reprocessing around 1990, a period of rehabilitation commenced for parts of the mine site. In 1993, the state government accepted responsibilities to manage the historical environmental impacts of the mine site.”
Today, the town operates as a kind of big museum or historical theme park for tourists, but with extra emphasis on “education and research with interpretation of the industrial archaeology”. Mt Morgan is part of the Queensland Heritage Trail Network (QHTN) project aimed at developing and promoting a “whole-of-town experience”.
The open-cut gold mine is part of the historical tour of the town which begins at the very pretty restored Mt Morgan Railway Station. Among other places the tour visits are the historic museum and some manmade caves that have 150 million-year-old dinosaur footprints on the ceiling. Never mind the Bundy Bears — it sounds like the local dinosaurs knew how to party, too!
“Mt Morgan may not be large, but what it lacks in size it makes up for in heart and you only need stop and say hello to a resident to find this out,” says the local tourist office. That’s true, too. Most of the town might be in dire need of a coat of paint, but the locals are friendly and only too keen to chat. They seem pretty happy about where they live, too.
“Beautiful place,” said a Katana 650 owner I found admiring my ST1300 Honda outside the hot bread shop. I think he was referring more to the bush surrounding the town than the often ramshackle buildings themselves. Inside, the staff had just about turned the place over to try to find a toaster after I had asked if I could have toast for breakfast. They didn’t find it, but it wasn’t for lack of looking. I suspect if the local Retravision store had been open, they would have gone and bought one just for me.
Cheerful helpfulness — that’s the feeling you get all over town; one bloke in a 4WD did a U-turn and came back just to tell me the parked bike’s headlight was on.
Ah yes, the bike … I know some of you resent these stories that take a long time to get around to motorcycles, but trust me — there is usually a reason. In this case, it’s the fact that Mt Morgan is an ideal breakfast spot that sits at the top of a terrific little set of corners called the Mt Morgan Range Road. It’s only 3km long, but the climb up the escarpment is in especially good shape and a huge amount of fun. There’s a moderate amount of traffic, so it’s worth being careful.
But the climb up the range is not all there is to it. The town also offers a remarkable number of loops to ride, of many different lengths. Take the shortest one: some 40km up the Range Road from Rockhampton via Bouldercombe and then about the same distance back via the Razorback and Gracemere. Just right for a breakfast run (maybe they will have found the toaster at the hot bread shop) before tackling the more serious business of the day, be it business or a ride somewhere else.
Possible longer loops include a run down to Dululu and back to Rockhampton via Westwood; a run to the south to Biloela and back via Calliope and the Bruce Highway; or a considerably longer run along the Dawson Highway through Banana and Springsure before returning via Emerald and the Capricorn Highway. You could combine them differently, too, like Rocky/Mt Morgan/Banana/Biloela/Dululu/Westwood/Rocky, for instance. And that’s only on tar; there are endless routes that include a bit, or a lot, of dirt. It’s worth stopping for the night at Rockhampton if you’re on your way up or down the coast, just to have a go at one or more of these.
All of them give you the opportunity to help Mt Morgan along by spending a few bucks on fuel, a tour, a souvenir or breakfast in the town. But that still leaves the question of where the 8 billion bucks from the gold went. While I was having my own breakfast out on the footpath at the bread shop, I asked the bloke at the next table what he thought had happened to all the mine’s money. He grinned.
“Mining towns, mate,” he said, and made a sweeping sowing gesture. “The money comes, the money goes.”
At least in Mt Morgan the government is putting some of the money back, building what should be a viable tourism industry and research base to keep the place going and provide work. Nobody ever does that for my (or your, I bet) wallet.