Koolyanobbing is located north-northeast of the town of
Southern Cross, Western Australia
Southern Cross is a town in Western Australia, 371 kilometres east of state capital Perth on the Great Eastern Highway. It was founded by gold prospectors in 1888, and gazetted in 1890. It is the major town and administrative centre of the Shi ...
. A subsidiary of
Cleveland-Cliffs
Cleveland-Cliffs Inc., formerly Cliffs Natural Resources, is a Cleveland, Ohio-based company that specializes in the mining, beneficiation, and pelletizing of iron ore, as well as steelmaking, including stamping and tooling. It is the largest f ...
of
Cleveland
Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...
, Ohio mines
Iron ore here. The ore is railed to the port at
Esperance for export. Current operations commenced in 1993. The current owner and operator of the lease is
Mineral Resources
Natural resources are resources that are drawn from nature and used with few modifications. This includes the sources of valued characteristics such as commercial and industrial use, aesthetic value, scientific interest and cultural value. O ...
who took over from Cleveland-Cliffs in July 2018. MRL currently mine the ore and transport it to the port of Esperance
History
The first European to visit the area was
Charles Cooke Hunt in 1864 who explored the Koolyanobbing range that is situated nearby.
The next European to visit the area, in 1887 and later in 1891, was a
gold
Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au (from la, aurum) and atomic number 79. This makes it one of the higher atomic number elements that occur naturally. It is a bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile me ...
prospector
Prospector may refer to:
Space exploration
* Prospector (spacecraft), a planned lunar probe, canceled in 1962
* '' Lunar Prospector'', a NASA spacecraft
Trains
* Prospector (train), a passenger train operated by the Denver & Rio Grande Western ...
named Henry Dowd, who thought that the rocks in the area were of no value. He recorded his findings and stored them in a bottle that was buried next to a survey peg and which was found again in 1963 at what is now known as Dowd Hill.
Iron ore was first mined at Koolyanobbing from around 1950. It was sent by truck to Southern Cross from where it was shipped by rail to
Wundowie, where there was a state-owned blast furnace.
The town was established to service a new
iron ore mine in the 1960s at Dowd Hill. The town was gazetted in 1965. The former
Eastern Goldfields Railway
The Eastern Goldfields Railway was built in the 1890s by the Western Australian Government Railways to connect Perth with the Eastern Goldfields at Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie.
History
The Eastern Railway opened in stages from Perth to Nort ...
between Southern Cross and Kalgoorlie was realigned for change to standard gauge, and to service the Koolyanobbing mine.
The name is of local Aboriginal origin, meaning "place of large rocks."
Dampier Mining Co Ltd, a subsidiary of
BHP
BHP Group Limited (formerly known as BHP Billiton) is an Australian multinational mining, metals, natural gas petroleum public company that is headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
The Broken Hill Proprietary Company was founded ...
, mined iron ore between 1967 and 1983. Ore was shipped by rail to
Kwinana, near Perth, to supply
Australian Iron & Steel's (also a BHP subsidiary ) blast furnace. The closure of the Kwinana blast furnace in 1982 resulted in suspension of iron ore mining at Koolyanobbing until 1993.
WA Salt Supply produces
salt
Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quant ...
at Lake Deborah, to the north, which is railed from Koolyanobbing to
Kwinana.
The Koolyanobbing Range supports many endemic, priority and one declared rare flora species.
Rail services
The
''Prospector'' service, which runs each way between
East Perth
East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth.
Etymology
As in other languages, the word is formed from the fac ...
and
Kalgoorlie once or twice each day, stops at Koolyanobbing.
See also
*
References
{{authority control
Mining towns in Western Australia
Eastern Goldfields Railway
Shire of Yilgarn