13 April 2024
Yesterday we arrived at the old Mary Kathleen town, now deserted, to ‘free camp’ for a few nights. A wonderful and very interesting place. Here’s a little bit of history:
Mary Kathleen, was a uranium mining town, about mid way between Mount Isa and Cloncurry in western Queensland, in the Cloncurry Shire.
The Mary Kathleen uranium discovery was made by Clem Walton and Norm McConachy in 1954, and named after McConachy’s wife. Prospecting and exploitation rights were subsequently onsold, and in 1955 Rio Tinto Mining formed Mary Kathleen Uranium Ltd to develop a mine and service town. An architect-designed town grew during 1956-58, with reticulated water from a dam, Lake Corella.
The ore was mined by the open-cut method and processed on site. The town, six km away, was built around a shallow valley with a post office, cinema, sports ovals, a school, banks and a community store. By 1963 the major supply contract signed with the UK Atomic Energy Authority had been satisfied ahead of schedule, and large reserves of ore lay at grass. Consequently, the works were closed down. New supply contracts with Japanese, German and American power utilities prompted a re-opening in 1974, with Mary Kathleen’s second life extended to 1982 when reserves were finally exhausted. The site was rehabilitated, and most of the buildings sold and removed.
Mary Kathleen: Centre for the Government of Queensland, The University of Queensland.
Interestingly, I have a family connection to Mary Kathleen. My grandfather (Dad’s father, Clem Knight) was a senior geologist with Conzinc Rio Tinto in the 1950s. In 1954 he was sent to discover the exact location of the uranium deposit that was thought to be in the area. Clem had a 4WD vehicle, modern instruments, and the support of an aircraft doing flyovers with additional sensors etc. At the same time, two guys with a 2WD car and a Geiger counter were in the same area trying to do exactly the same thing. The race was on!
The two guys in the 2WD car took a very thorough (perhaps you could call it a ‘brute force’ approach) by driving from Mount Isa to Cloncurry and exploring every side road etc with their trusty Geiger counter. These two gentlemen, Clem Walton and Norm McConachy (refer quote above, and what are the chances there was a Clem in each camp), won the race and found the deposit first. To the winner, the spoils.
Anyway, you can now free camp in the abandoned town. It’s a wonderful location, has lots of flat concrete sites to park on where buildings used to rest, and even has solid 4G mobile coverage! We camped on the old bitumen basketball court.
And on our first night we ran into a couple (Anne and Mick) from the Hunter Valley we had camped next to in Winton. They are on their way to see their sons in Darwin and were a wealth of knowledge on where to stay in our coming weeks. We had a few cold drinks around a fire with them, which was a great way to end the day.
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