3 minute read
A look back in time
FRANCES WINDOLF
A LONG-TIME COOLUM RESIDENT WITH A PASSION FOR LOCAL HISTORY
Mining Our Beaches
IN MY last article I briefly mentioned that Coolum residents had “reacted angrily” to a 1956 proposal from outside our area that our beautiful beaches could be plundered for sand mining – and that this was the start of our area’s strong environmental awareness and activism.
Until that time most residents and visitors, loving our wonderful golden sands, were blissfully unaware that the dark streaks, common to our sandy beaches, were a sign of much-desired mineral materials, including rutile, ilmenite, monazite and zircon, which could be used in making alloys for high technology industries. In fact, as early as 1929, a syndicate had been formed to mine “a peculiar black sand deposit at Coolum” and had approached the Moreton Sugar Mill to see if sand could be freighted to Nambour on the cane trams, but it is thought that the onset of the Great Depression of 1929 may have led to the demise of their plans.
However, in the years following World War 2, when the Korean War and the “Cold War” in Europe instigated huge expansions in the manufacture of jet aircraft, the possibility that the black sands on our beaches might become hugely important brought the subject to the fore again.
In April 1956 it was said that Australia might – over the next few decades – produce “70 per cent of the world’s rutile [used in jet engines and space craft], 73 per cent of the world’s zircon [used in nuclear reactors] and 65 per cent of the world’s monazite [for nuclear fuel]”. Our beaches were in danger of becoming mine sites, dredged for heavy minerals, then left as waste lands!
Colin Sweett, describing the procedure on Stradbroke Island, describes beach mining as “hard work, with between 25 and 30 men working in teams to shovel sand as fast as they could”, and the results were catastrophic.
In my records I have a letter regarding an “Application for Dredging Lease” dated January 31, 1956 “forwarding objections on behalf of a number of landholders in the Coronation Beach Estate” [the area now known as Yaroomba] and in February 1956, at a meeting of the Coolum Beach Progress Association, the Shire Chairman, Mr. D.A.Low “spoke of sand mining”, and that “After discussion it was decided to send an urgent telegram to the Minister for Mines, objecting to the mining of frontal dunes”.
The telegram seems to have been successful, but in August 1966 Peter Eric Gauld applied for mining leases in a strip along the sand dunes, 10 chains wide, from high water mark, stretching from Warragah Parade to the Maroochy River Bar. Fortunately, this and other Mining Lease applications by Mr. Gauld, appear to have remained unsuccessful!
