Summary

An extract from the Foreword:

Throughout mining regions in North Queensland are scattered sites of townships now utterly deserted. Evidence of mining is unmistakable: the crater-like excavations, heaped-up tailings and massive concrete engine mountings may well survive in that bleak landscape as long as any works of man on this continent. Often not a hearth-stone nor a brick remain to show that men once lived, and sometimes died, there. The names of vanished towns usually mean little or nothing to most people: Argentine, Calcifer, Cape River, Coolgarra, Donnybrook, Gilberton, Hampden, Maytown, Mt. Elliot, OK ...

For most Queenslanders, and for many people elsewhere in Australia, one such name has exact and vivid associations: Mt Mulligan is remembered for one terrible day in September 1921. Yet Mt Mulligan operated for over forty years - much longer than most North Queensland mines - and closed down as recently as 1958. In most respects it stood apart from other North Queensland mines: a coal-mine in the midst of a metalliferous field, it produced the only coal ever mined north of the Bowen Basin. In its heyday it was well-equipped and modern.