Captains Flat | |||||||||||||
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 Captains Flat from Mine Hill | |||||||||||||
  Captains Flat Location in New South Wales | |||||||||||||
| Coordinates:35°35′19″S149°26′51″E / 35.58861°S 149.44750°E /-35.58861; 149.44750 | |||||||||||||
| Country | Australia | ||||||||||||
| State | New South Wales | ||||||||||||
| LGA | |||||||||||||
| Location |
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| Established | 1883 | ||||||||||||
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| • Federal division | |||||||||||||
| Elevation | 852 m (2,795 ft) | ||||||||||||
| Population | |||||||||||||
| • Total | 473 (UCL2021)[2] | ||||||||||||
| Postcode | 2623 | ||||||||||||
| County | Murray | ||||||||||||
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Captains Flat is a town in theSouthern Tablelands of ruralNew South Wales, Australia, inQueanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council.[3] It is south ofQueanbeyan. Captains Flat township is bounded by the non-urban parts of the locality of Captains Flat in the north, east and west, and Captains Flat Road, the Molonglo River and Foxlow Street in the south.[4]
It is suggested the town took its name from a whitebullock named "Captain" who would slip away from Foxlow station, 12 km away, to graze grassy flatlands near the Molonglo River.[5][6]
Prior to the arrival of Europeans, the area was inhabited byNgarigo Aboriginal people. The town formed as a result of mining forgold,silver,lead,zinc,copper andiron pyrites in the hills surrounding the upper reaches of theMolonglo River. The town boomed from 1881 to 1899, but went into a rapid decline until 1939, whenrail access revived mining activity for another 23 years.
Copper was found in the area in 1874 by J.E. Wright of Foxlow station. The Molonglo goldfield was declared in 1882 and mining for gold and silver commenced at two mines, Koh-i-noor and Commodore, which were operated by two mining companies. Twoblast furnaces were built in 1885. The two companies merged in 1894 and formed the Lake George United Mining and Smelting Company. Up to that time the mines had produced mainly copper with some silver and a small amount of gold. Processing was made harder because of the presence of zinc. To convey ore to the bins at the smelter, the company built a 2 ft (610mm) tramway in 1897. Trains of small 4-wheel dump cars were hauled by aKrauss steam locomotive. The tramway appears to have closed about 1902.[7] In the early twentieth century the mine produced gold and copper. Mining activity ceased in 1920.
The impact onEuropean markets due toWorld War II meant mining operations were subsidised by the government through power and freight concessions as the foreign revenue was seen as important to the Australian economy. In 1940, 550 people were employed and the local population was 1700. The mining company, Lake George Mines, built 152fibro cottages for married miners, ahostel for single men and some of the population lived in tents. The company also built a theatre, hospital, tennis courts and a swimming pool, and paid for the medical staff, the provision of street lighting, electricity and water.
In the 1930s and 1940s many of the old buildings were replaced including the hotel. The new hotel built in 1938 was said to have thelongest bar in Australia at the time; it was 32 metres long.
There were some significant labourstrikes by the miners in the 1940s and 1950s. The strike of 1948/49 and the lockout of 1954/55 both lasted for seven months. The mine closed on 11 March 1962 due to the lack of viable ore. To that point men had worked in tunnels extending 840 metres (2,800 feet) below the ground. The first strike started by a local miner named T.B. Hutchinson who fed up with the constant physical stress caused hazardous materials, threw down his miners bucket hat onto the floor in front of the visiting owner H.Wood causing a localised riot within the zinc mine.
From 1939 to 1962 just over 4 milliontonnes of ore was extracted containing 1.5 million tonnes of concentrates: 39% of which were zinc, 33% pyrites, 24% lead, 5% copper, and small amounts of gold (2850 tonnes) and silver (155 tonnes). Immediately after the closure the Lake George Mines dismantled and sold the infrastructure including removing many of the cottages.
TheCaptains Flat railway line fromBungendore opened in 1940 with tri-weekly service. This was reduced to once a week following the closure of the mine. The railway was booked out of use on 31 August 1968 but reopened for a few weeks in 1969 for the filming of the movie "Ned Kelly".
The impact ofsulphur andacid rain produced by thesmelting has resulted in the area around the mines having a stark and somewhat alien landscape reminiscent ofQueenstown inTasmania.
In 1939 and 1942 minetailings and slime dams collapsed into the Molonglo River. The resulting pollution severely damaged the ecological communities of the Molonglo River downstream from the mine site, and eradicated all native fish populations. Despite Federal and NSW government funded remediation programs of $2.5m in 1976, toxicleachates still enter the river from the Captains Flat mine site. The remediation works covered the waste dumps with impermeable clay and vegetation designed to reduce the risk of catastrophic failure of the dumps. The owners of the mine were not held accountable for the pollution and did not contribute to the remediation of the environmental impact. A large stretch of the Molonglo is still devoid of native fish and awaits their re-establishment.
Prospecting has commenced in the area again, begun by Monaro Mining[8][9] (later known as Australian-American Mining, then AusROC Metals Ltd) and taken over by Ironbark Gold.[10]
In February 2021 the NSW Environment Protection Authority carried out precautionary testing of surface soils in public and community spaces.[11] They published a publicreport on their findings that showed the public areas that were found with high lead contamination. Areas with high levels included "Foxlow Parklet" andCaptains Flat Community Preschool.
When theCaptains Flat Community Preschool was made aware of these results the management committee and staff took immediate measures to ensure that the children could continue to attend in a safe manner. The Preschool was closed for one week while deep cleaning of the inside of the building and all toys in the sheds was performed. The outside playground was closed and a "shoes off inside" policy implemented when the children returned.[12] The Preschool is on NSW Crown Land and any remediation work to be done will be performed by that Department to their own schedule. Meanwhile the Preschool will continue to operate with restrictions to keep the children safe.[13]
The school had to be relocated to the oval near Captains Flat Public School.
The Captains Flat Weather Radar is the main weather radar for theACT and the southern coast and tablelands ofNSW. It is aWSR-74S type radar operated by theBureau of Meteorology, mounted on a 22.35m tower on Mt Cowangerong.
Media related toCaptains Flat, New South Wales at Wikimedia Commons
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