Koolan Island, WA

Sweet recollections bringing blissful and joyous moments of long ago ... Once upon a time ... Way back when ... In Koolan Island iron ore mine.

Time flies so quickly. Now, all I have are memories pressed between the pages of my mind. Makes me nostalgic when bringing them back.

Our office was a donga on top of the quarry overlooking the open pit below. Outside was a 360-degree breathtakingly scenic view of the sea and the neighbouring isles. On a reflective note, it was a prison of beauty -- a chapter in my life. Now, it all seems like just a dream.

Must admit miss those days. 'twas so good to be young, then!

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Koolan Island
Broadcast 6.30pm on 21/06/2004

Koolan Island is a long way from the 'big smoke'. What would draw people to this speck on the map, just one of about 800 islands that make up the Buccaneer Archipelago, 3500 kilometres north of Perth in Western Australia? First it was pearls, and then iron ore. The island was home to one of Western Australia's richest iron ore mines. At one stage the raw ore was said to be so pure that it was possible to weld rocks together. Despite the riches to be had, life at such a remote mine site was always going to be difficult.  Now, almost all signs of the island's long mining history have been erased.

GEORGE NEGUS: And it's also up there on the Indian Ocean, just off the north-west coast of WA, that we found our next out-of-the-way story location. Indeed, Koolan Island, you could say, is about as far from the big smoke as it's possible to be and still be in this country.

DAVID BATTY, REPORTER: In the early days of the pearl shell industry, in the north-west of WA, hundreds of sailing luggers with their Japanese divers combed the ocean floor looking for the prized shell. A little-known fact is that to keep the luggers upright, many of them carried tons of almost pure iron ore as ballast. The source of this rich mineral deposit was a few hundred kilometres to the north of Broome, in the Buccaneer Archipelago, at Koolan and Cockatoo Islands. To this day, lumps of the glistening ore from the old luggers can be found scattered along Broome's foreshore at low tide.

PETER BIBBY, MINE WORKER: There were so many luggers using this rock and being parked on the shores here where the mangroves are now and these luggers have rotted away and the iron ore has just been left behind on the beach here.

DAVID BATTY: Through the 1940s, mining companies moved in on the rich deposit, and by 1963, BHP had established substantial mining operations on both Cockatoo and Koolan Islands. At the time, these new iron ore mines were the largest and remotest in the country.

PETER BIBBY: The ore body was like a big steep cliff that plunged down into the sea - big blue cliff. Extraordinary sight - the whole side of the island just was iron ore.

DAVID BATTY: The ore is said to be so pure you can weld the rocks together. As a young man, Peter Bibby became a mineworker at the lonely outpost.

PETER BIBBY: Well, when I went to Koolan Island, it was like the big adventure. The whole north of WA was alive with projects. They were exploring for oil, up here, in the Kimberley, and here was this project out on an island. We flew up in a plane, and you just looked down and gasped at it. The sea of a lovely colour, and the sky blue all day and even when the wet started to develop, big thunderclouds were...they were great entertainment, lightning and everything.

DAVID BATTY: At their peak, the islands were home to over 300 people. Whole families were airlifted into a strange new world of heat, humidity, crocodiles and cyclones.

JONATHON UPHILL, MINE MANAGER: I arrived there and I thought, "What on earth have I done?" It was hot! This was in December, about the worst time of year up there, before the rain started. It was hot and steamy and the kids hadn't slept well on the plane - it was an overnight flight. And I thought, "Oh, I think I'd like to turn around and go straight back."

DAVID BATTY: BHP soon recognised the need to break the monotony of island life and encouraged activities which would help create a community atmosphere.

JONATHON UPHILL: You had to make your own social life. There was nothing. No television. It was before television was available there. You could get a scratchy radio reception. So it was up to yourself. You had to make your own entertainment.

PETER BIBBY: You had your job, which was challenging and interesting, and they fed everybody very well, and you had your ration of beer at the end of the day, but you eventually got the message that you were alone on this island with this mob of people around you and you were hemmed in. You were in a kind of prison, really. It's a prison of beauty.

JONATHON UPHILL: The men didn't suffer from the isolation so much because they were working and the guys were up there to earn money, so they were after overtime and work, work, work. But the wives, they would feel the isolation, no doubt about that at all.

PETER BIBBY: BHP wanted families. They knew that single blokes got the work done but they were also a lot of trouble and didn't stay very long. So they had a lot of houses, very fine houses for the time, and they had million-dollar views, all of them, but even those families, you sensed they began to encounter tensions. I know a lot of people, after a while, they got this kind of fever and they had to flee, had to go, or if they stayed, they might've had a breakdown.

DAVID BATTY: With other sources of iron ore in WA proving more profitable, BHP closed their mines on Cockatoo and Koolan by 1992. Up till then, they'd extracted over 67 million tonnes of iron ore.

JONATHON UPHILL: We look back, I think, with quite fond memories of the place. It was a very free, relaxed sort of a lifestyle. To move then back to a big city, as we did to Melbourne, it was strange for a long time.

DAVID BATTY: Today, mining has resumed on Cockatoo Island after a brief stint as a resort, and there's talk of reopening the mine at Koolan.

PETER BIBBY: All those men would remember, and the women that were there with them, they'll remember that as a big adventure in their lives. It certainly made quite a party on Koolan for a while. 

GEORGE NEGUS: A prison of beauty - a good description. Producer David Batty there, and the resourceful Koolan Islanders. Not always entirely harmonious, it would seem, despite their own best efforts. Maybe it's the distance thing.

Yeah! 30+ years ago.