Radium Hill mine shut down in 1908; Douglas Mawson loses link and claims during first Antarctic expedition

Douglas Mawson (at right, in 1910 after return from first Antarctic expedition) and, at left (seated in back of the car), the centre of attention at the Adelaide suburb of Semaphore in 1914 after his second expedition. 
Main image by W.S. Smith, courtesy State Library of South Australia

Arthur Smith worked the Radium Hill mine site that he'd discovered in 1906 for the next two years. Adjoining leases stretched for three kilometres along the lode of Australia’s first uranium mine, with one of them half owned by Douglas Mawson.

As lecturer in mineralogy and petrology at Adelaide University with a particular interest in radioactivity, Mawson was “intimately connected” to the Radium Hill from the beginning and worked on it for two years, hoping to find a way of extracting radium at a profit.

Smith’s “Carnotite Mine” discovery had excited others to peg claims, including Albert McBride, owner of Outalpa Station where the find was made. McBride, who had share dealings with mines at Broken Hill and Kalgoorlie, drove 50km across country to the find his claim, hoping to expand his fortune. Two Swedish brothers named Olson jumped ship at Port Adelaide and walked 460km to Radium Hill to find work at this “wonder metal” mine.

Interest was further stimulated when Arthur Smith sent an unusual specimen of cuprite ore from his mine to Shepherd’s Bush, London, for the Franco-British Exhibition in 1908. The specimen was awarded a diploma for gold medal. Mawson also sent samples around the world, with pioneering nuclear researchers Ernest Rutherford and Marie Curie among those who received it.

At the Radium Hill mine site, problems emerged for Smith. His workers sank a shaft 30 metres on the underlay where it struck brackish water in 1907. With his finances exhausted, Smith stopped mining and allowed his lease to lapse.

Mawson hadn’t been able to fully exploit the potential of his mining venture at Radium Hill when he left for Antarctica on the Shackleton expedition 1907-09. He recounted later:  “When I returned, I found that our claims had been jumped by a publican from Broken Hill.”