The tour bus picked us from the main street of Mount Morgan at 10.30am. The first part of the trip was around the town, finding out much of the local history. The number of houses in the town has reduced from thousands to hundreds with the mine shutting down in the late 1980's. Many of the miners simply packed up their house ie. contents and the house itself (in true QLD style) and relocated Rockhampton. Mount Morgan is also the home of the first Australian serviceman to be killed in overseas conflict, Trooper Victor Jones, killed in the Boer War.
After taking in the town, we then headed up to the mine site. The mine is now just a large hole in the ground, full of water and pretty much a wasteland. Much of the land and water is an environmental hazard due to chemicals leaching into the soil. One of the major toxins is arsenic, which was used in the process to extract gold from the rock. The office on site held some fossils and plaster casts of the dinosaur footprints that we were unable to see.
The tour of the site was very interesting and concluded with a hunt for fools gold at the site lookout. Emily was quite selective and good at picking out some, nice fools gold while Lachie simply filled his bag with rocks.
After some lunch and a coffee, we jumped back into the car and headed off to Yeppoon, our next stop.
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