Glassford Creek Smelter Sites, Mining heritage site in Glassford State Forest, Queensland, Australia.
Glassford Creek Smelter Sites are the remains of a copper smelter in Glassford State Forest, reached by a four-wheel-drive track that crosses the creek several times. One brick chimney about 18 metres tall still stands; beside it are at least six pits in two rows of three, the footings of a 7-by-7.5-metre building, a three-hopper feed bin and a slagheap about 29 by 20 metres.
Copper was discovered at Glassford Creek in 1893, and the field was first worked for silver, then gold from 1896, before returning to copper. The Boompa Copper Company planned reverberatory smelters in 1900; they were completed about 1903 and smelting ran until 1908, when the company went into liquidation. The water-jacket furnace, finished around 1906, was dismantled in 1915, and mining at the Blue Bag and Lady Inez lodes ended in 1921.
The field's two main lodes were the Blue Bag Mine in the north and the Lady Inez Mine in the south, and the Blue Bag was the major producer. Ore was handpicked over shaker tables after passing a rock-breaker before smelting. The place is also known as the Glassford Creek Copper Smelters.
Access requires a four-wheel drive vehicle and follows a track from Monto-Many Peaks Road. Visitors should prepare for the remote location and limited facilities available on site.
The 1915 salvage of furnace residues recovered 8 long tons of copper matte, yielding 1 long ton 11 cwt of copper, 80 ounces of gold and 113 ounces of silver. The small haul showed the Boompa Copper Company's smelting had been inefficient or poorly built.
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