Moonta waste tips

The wasteland in and around the waste tips at the Moonta cooper mines is a relic of the later years of operations on the site. Copper ore was mined at Moonta from 1862 until 1923, but copper metal was produced there for another twenty years after the mines closed. Copper was being extracted from the waste dumps by acid leaching from 1901 onward, and when mining ceased, the process continued for another generation. While the quantities of copper produced were never large, the process was capable of operating at virtually no cost, utilising principally seawater, by-product sulphuric acid and scrap metal, and consuming minimal labour and fuel.

Best seen original size.