We spent 2 days getting down and dirty by touring the Mount
Isa Copper Smelter and Black Star Open Cut Zinc Lead Mine.
Problem was NO CAMERAS ALLOWED ON SITE! For either place so
no photos for you.
It was fantastic and brought back lots of memories for us of
Morawa and Koolanooka Iron ore Mine.
The Copper is refined to 98% pure ingots weighing about 173
kilos each. Each one is weighed and if not the correct weigh is rejected and
sent back through the works again.
After being smelted the ingots are sent to Townsville for
further processing.
At the moment there is talk that in 2 years time it will be
shipped out of Australia for processing.
These pictures I found on the net.
This section was brilliant to watch being done we were in a room up above all the workings so could look down on it have to say it was rather warm.....
The Zinc Lead in its raw state is sent be rail to Townsville
and then shipped out to the UK for processing.
We were taken to the bottom of the open cut to see the
shovel working digging the ore and loading the trucks. It takes the fully
loaded truck 10 minutes to drive back to the top.
The ore was taken to the crushing plant and the rubble went
to the rumble heaps.
We really enjoyed our tours and by the way both tour guides
were Tony`s cousins lovely guys and we really appreciated the time they spent
with us.
We learnt after leaving there that the mine no longer
conducts any tours so we were very lucky indeed.
Thanks so much to Warren and Phillip.
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