The booklets cover the boom which followed after the 1888 rich copper ore find on Chillagoe Station . Small blast furnaces were built and a rich silver- lead field was discovered in l890. Smelters were set up in Chillagoe and the Mareeba to Chillagoe railway line was constructed by 1901 , later extended 10 miles to Mungana , where there were more mines.
Between 1901 and 1943 the smelters produced 175,000 ounces of gold, 6,500,000 ounces of silver, 60,000 tons of copper and 5000 tons of lead , valued at $14million .
Early in the 20th century Chillagoe had a population of 10,000, 10 hotels, two soft drink factories,two newspapers , a doctor, a dentist , churches , a masonic lodge . Very l ittle of the boomtown survived .
Both booklets were compiled and illustrated by Lee and Alex Hardaker ,who first went to Chillagoe as visitors in l969 to see its spectacular caves . They returned in l975 to build a museum to house the history of Chillagoe and district, displaying old photographs, maps, documents and mining information, run by Lee.
Also on display were butterflies, insects, Aboriginal artifacts , minerals and gemstones.
Glenville Pike Gold
There was also an art gallery of sketches by Alex , self taught , who became a ranger with the National Parks for six years before retiring through illness in l980. Hardaker designed the l981 cover of The Golden Days , by Glenville Pike, about life in North Queensland during the goldrush era, based on a series of articles by the late Hugh A. Borland, published in the Cairns Post in l946.
The revised edition of Chillagoe seen above contains a handwritten inscription from the Hardakers dated 14/9/83, at the "Chillagoe Museum ".
It includes many old photographs and a page from the Brisbane Courier Mail of key figures in the Mungana Mine Royal Commission , Theodore one of the defendants ,top left in illustration. It was revealed that Theodore and another Queensland politician ,William McCormack , Speaker of the House, had shares in and made profits from the copper mine, without making it known , when the government bought it.
Theodore was forced to stand down as the Federal Treasurer. It was said the Mungana affair likely cost Theodore a chance to become prime minister. Historian Ross Fitzgerald called Theodore "the most talented Labor politician never to be prime minister of Australia", and noted that his admirers included Paul Keating, Bob Katter and Jack Lang .
When Theodore was premier, the state pursued interventionist economic policies , established state run enterprises and introduced new competition and labour market regulations. These were seen as "socialist " measures and thus he was called "Red Ted " Theodore.
When the Depression hit Australia in the l930s, Theordore, way ahead of conventional economic thinking of the day, believed the economy should be stimulated by what would become known as John Maynard Keynes economics, instead of cut backs in many area.
This brought him into conflict with key members of his own party . He lost his seat in the l931 landslide against the Scullin regime.
Media deals, Inluence
Theodore , 47 , then became closely connected with Frank Packer, 24, son of journalist and founder of the Packer media group, Richard Clyde Packer . They became involved in several profitable ventures, Theodore was even made chairman of Australian Consolidated Press , publisher of the highly successful Australian Women's Weekly and the Sydney Daily Telegraph . He interested himself in the financial and administration side of operations ,
Dynamic Theodore was also involved with Packer in several gold mines in Fiji, where he lived for a time .
FOOTNOTE : Theodore's father , Vasile Teodorescu, was born in Romania , member of a well- to- do family connected with Romanian nobility. Instead of going into the priesthood, he joined the British merchant navy, came to Australia ,
On an l882 ship voyage to Fremantle , under the name Basil Stephen Theodore , he met Annie Turner, an adventurous English girl, descended from Irish immigrants, employed in a cotton mill after her father died , who come out to Western Australian at the invitation of a stepbrother, an ex convict, after her mother died .
It was obviously a shipboard romance. They kept in contact by letter and married soon after.
Young Edward , the second of six children , was born in Adelaide in 1884, In l903, he joined his father on an unsuccessful prospecting trip looking for copper in Western Australia .
It is interesting to note that Edward was involved in negotiating an industrial deal at Altunga , the first major Euopean settlement in Central Australia , 110 kilometres from Alice Springs , established after gold was found during an 1887 overland expedition from Darwin to South Australia ,and there was a rush to the area , a smelter built .
In l906 , Edward lobbed in Cairns and went looking for tin in the Chillagoe area , little knowing the dramatic part this mining area would play in his future career.
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