Soroako, also spelled Sorowako, is a small mining town in the north-east of
South Sulawesi
South Sulawesi ( id, Sulawesi Selatan) is a province in the southern peninsula of Sulawesi. The Selayar Islands archipelago to the south of Sulawesi is also part of the province. The capital is Makassar. The province is bordered by Central Sul ...
province, in the centre of
Sulawesi island in
Indonesia
Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...
.
It is the location of the
Sorowako Mine, which is the largest
open-pit mine
Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a borrow.
This form of mining ...
in Indonesia, owned by
PT Inco, a subsidiary of the
Canadian
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...
based mining company
Vale Inco
Vale Canada Limited (formerly Vale Inco, CVRD Inco and Inco Limited; for corporate branding purposes simply known as "Vale" and pronounced in English) is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Brazilian mining company Vale. Vale's nickel mining and ...
.
Geography
It is located in the Verbeek mountains, Soroako is surrounded by three natural lakes:
Lake Matano
Lake Matano ( id, Danau Matano), also known as Matana, is a natural lake in East Luwu Regency, South Sulawesi province, Indonesia. With a depth of , it is the deepest lake in Indonesia (ranked by maximum depth), the 10th deepest lake in the w ...
,
Lake Towuti and
Lake Mahalona.
Matano Lake is the deepest lake in Indonesia.
Matano Lake is surrounded by ring of small mountain rock. The weather sometimes can be very severe, often with thunder and lightning storms. Small earthquakes are common as well. Almost every year in December - January, a strange phenomenon occurs in the center of Matano Lake. A large tornado appears to stand still in the middle of the lake and remains there for a short time. Seen from shore the tornado looks to have a diameter of approximately 10 meters. While the tornado is standing still above the lake a cloud comes down to the surface of the lake and then seems to come up again through the funnel of the tornado.
The source of Matano Lake is believed come from an area west of the lake that the native people call Matano village. In this area one can sometimes see
white-bellied sea eagle
The white-bellied sea eagle (''Haliaeetus leucogaster''), also known as the white-breasted sea eagle, is a large diurnal bird of prey in the family Accipitridae. Originally described by Johann Friedrich Gmelin in 1788, it is closely relate ...
.
People
Most of Soroako's residents work as employees for the mining company PT. Vale Indonesia, Tbk.
(before PT. Inco). They come to Soroako from all over Indonesia. The rest of the population work primarily as farmers or fishermen.
In the mountain side on the west side of town there is a natural cave that remains largely unexplored. Near the entrance is a chamber full of hundreds of skeletons that some say are the remains of a rebel force (
PKI) from the 1950s and others claim is actually a native cemetery (similar to the cemetery caves of
Tanah Toraja).
References
Populated places in South Sulawesi
{{SSulawesi-geo-stub