QUEENSLAND'S GERMAN CONNECTIONS - PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE

Metallurgical interests in the far north

Rich veins of German investment and technical expertise have long run beneath Queensland’s mining industry and make for a fascinating story, as Dr Frank Leschhorn describes. During Ludwig Leichhardt’s 1845 journey across Queensland and northern Australia, he observed “beds of coal indistinguishable from those in the Hunter Valley at Newcastle”, near Blackwater, where today millions of tons of coal are mined. One coal seam he found in the Bowen Basin was named the Leichhardt. (His surname was also subsequently used for a council, a river, a water dam, a highway, a copper mining project, a mining company, a division in the Australian Parliament, a species of Eucalyptus tree and even an insect called the Leichhardt grasshopper!) Queensland’s long mining history began with the discovery of gold in 1858 at Camoona. In 1862 a copper-rich lode was mined at Clermont followed by a huge coal seam nearby in 1864. (This went on to become Australia’s first large scale opencut operation in 1937.) Richard Daintree discovered the Cape River goldfield in the far north. in 1865. In 1872, mining commenced in the famous gold fields at Charters Towers and a year later, Palmer River. Copper and tin were discovered in the Herberton field in 1897. The history of German investment in foreign resources goes back to the end of the 19th century when industrialisation started in the Deutsches Reich and emerging heavy industries needed raw materials. At that time, base metals were only found in some of the Kaiser’s colonies in South West Africa, but supplies were also imported from Anglo-American countries. It was Australia – and specifically Queensland – which dominated German interest in mining ventures. As a result, significant tonnages of ores and concentrates were shipped to Germany, and it is no surprise that some of the German technology for mines and minerals processing plants were successfully used in the Australian mining fields. At the beginning of the 20th century, German investors also focused on the production of tin, bismuth and molybdenum. This influenced the copper industry through company shareholdings and ore buying in northern Queensland. Although not profiting significantly, they gained control of the metal markets, provided employment and established a new cultural dimension in the region. German interest in the Herberton tin fields began in 1890 when Wilhelm Wolff, Adolf Hirsch and Nathan Oppenheim invested in companies at Glen Linedale and near Irvinbank, ended by a lack of ore and the economic conditions of the early 1890s.

More success had been reaped 10 year prior, when John Moffat, a Scot, came north to develop the Great Northern Tin Mine in Herberton. His enterprise developed and controlled mines, dams and other infrastructure, providing capital which established the towns west from Herberton to Mount Garnet, Chillagoe, and north to Mount Molloy and Mount Carbine. Despite failures in copper, rising tin prices meant that industry burgeoned. The then world’s-largest bismuth producer, Franz Clotten of Frankfurt, founded the Lancelot Tin Mining Company in 1899 and established a tin and bismuth refinery at Lancelot on the Dry River southwest of Irvinbank in 1902. Clotten’s investment provided market access and co-operation with Moffat’s and other local mines, contributing to the prosperity of the area by employing 43 men in the mines and mill. In 1904, the Lancelot Company assisted the local industry through the facility of a multi- thousand pounds’ Sterling letter-of-credit to foster North Queensland exports, and Clotten organised shipping services to Germany via East Asia with Norddeutscher-Lloyd. That year, with a tin concentrate production of 3,986 tonnes in 1904, Queensland surpassed Tasmania, the previous largest tin-mining state in Australia. The Lancelot Company was then reconstructed as an Australian firm called Lancelot Freehold Tin & Copper Mines Ltd with several European investors and technical experts on its board. The company went on to raise new money to construct a dam, a tramway and refurbish the original plants using German supplies. The mill was equipped with two hydraulic Spitzlutte Rittinger classifiers and modern Löhrig vanners and 254 tonnes of tram rails imported from Hamburg. A sequence of unfortunate problems then transpired: rapid turnover of managers was compounded by local complaints about the German presence that concerned the sale of ore and the mysterious theft of money, food, and clothes. The company office burnt down in 1903 and all records were lost. As well, many of the German investors had over-extended themselves financially and were running out of ore. They failed to continue prospecting and the mine had to be shut in 1907, with the site and plant assets sold to John Moffat, and Irvinbank Mining auctioned in August 1911, to trade successfully for another year before further rationalisation. Herbert Liedemann, another German entrpreneur, was also active in the area. After three years working in a processing plant he started his own business purchasing tin ores from small mining operations for the Great Northern Tin Company.

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