Mt Isa is more than just a mine

February 23 this year was the centenary of the establishment of the Mount Isa mine, one of the world's largest mining and mineral processing enterprises and the greatest single engine of Queensland's economy.

By the 1970's, it had become the biggest silver mine, the biggest lead mine and one of the ten biggest copper and zinc mines - in the world. One mine.

Mount Isa has served the nation magnificently. When Australia desperately needed copper during World War Two, the mine switched from mining lead-zinc to copper (what orebodies!). In its mature years, it is still producing large quantities of copper, the ancient and modern metal now in increasingly short supply globally.

Copper is by far the largest volume metal required for the world's transformation to green energy and electric vehicles.

May all STEM students heed the call: Help to save the planet; learn to mine copper.

A powerful demonstration of the massive advantages to Australia of foreign investment, the Australian-owned Mount Isa Mines was rescued from pending oblivion by British then American capital and expertise. Gradually Australians bought it back. It took 23 years to pay its first dividend. By 1983, MIM was briefly the highest valued company on the Australian Stock Exchange and in the portfolios of many, many Australians. It was sold to an international Swiss-based mining company in 2003.

Mount Isa was born and built in the days when adding maximum value to Australia's mineral wealth was taken for granted. For the great Australian mining company leaders, it was a no-brainer. Why would you turn Australia into a quarry when you could multiply the company's and the nation's value through downstream processing, smelting and refining?

Mount Isa's cutting edge technologies were sold around the world – Isasmelt, Isa Process and more.

Working in intensely productive technological embrace with mining companies, Australia's universities housed some of the world's great schools of mining and metallurgy. Since the 1970's, the number of undergraduate mining engineering students around Australia has been decimated – literally.

Mount Isa is Queensland's only outback city, although not home to Queensland's largest mining-dependent workforce, which is Brisbane.

It is hard to detect local pride in Australia's extraordinary world leadership in mining and mineral processing technology. In contrast, Finland proudly boasted of its flash smelter and other achievements on its postage stamps. A proud people indeed. As Mount Isa grew, the Finnish Club became the third largest social club in Mount Isa.

Through MIM, Mount Isa spawned other mines, other downstream operations and thousands of other jobs. For years, many charities knew they could get their appeals off to flying starts with keystone donations from MIM.

One hundred years ago, in a hot, parched north-west Queensland summer, while his packhorse Hard Times sniffed water and wallowed in a sandy riverbed, prospector John Campbell Miles chipped away some of the world's highest grade lead ore (78%) from the dry bankside.

It's worth a thought today.