Mary Kathleen

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There are a few tracks leading into the different camping areas here at Clem Walton and then there is another track taking us to the Dam wall. It was quite rough in places and definitely a case of “tighten your bra straps and remove any dentures”! Unfortunately, just as we neared the dam wall, the road was barricaded to both vehicles and pedestrians. However peering through the scrub we saw what looked like a very refreshing waterhole and a small waterfall. There was a small picnic area and it too had a few vans and camper trailers parked up.



About 10kms back toward Mt Isa, in the Selwyn Range, lies the old ghost town of Mary Kathleen – built to support the nearby mine. There are no ruins per se, save for the remains of a fountain that was once constructed of beautiful coloured stone; today it holds the remains of a couple of campfires. There are a lot of concrete slabs where houses and the town’s buildings once stood as well as some kerb and channelling. This once thriving town now accommodates a good number of grey nomads as they temporarily park up against or on the concrete slabs in amongst the native trees. In its hey day it was quite a vibrant, busy town with 220 dwellings, a town square, schools, churches, two banks, supermarkets, library, beer garden and sporting facilities catering for over 1,100 residents and mine workers.



6km from the township is the old mine itself. There are very few signs directing you along the road, so cars were going in all sorts of directions in the hope of finding the correct one to take. We used our UHF radio to ask a fellow tourist which way to go.



Clem Walton and Norm McConachy discovered the area to be rich in uranium oxide and registered their claim in 1954. The name given was Mary Kathleen after Norm’s late wife. Mining operations began in 1956 and ran until 1963 when their contract to extract the ore was fulfilled. Contracts were not renewed, and so in 1982 everything at both the mine and town site was dismantled and removed to the nearby towns of Mt Isa and Cloncurry.



The road to the mine was once sealed but many years have taken their toll so that it has completely disintegrated in places whilst other parts are heavily pitted with potholes. It was like a slalom course – we weaved first one way to avoid a hole only to bump into another. Quite a few could be classified as craters and we had to “walk” the car through. There was no avoiding them as they were quite wide and took up the best part of the single lane road.



However, once through and making our way to the top it was all worth it. Agree or disagree with uranium mining – it was a sight to behold. The remaining slag and filings heaps, the towering walls rich in colour and showing drill marks deep into the rock as well as the cobalt blue lake was unlike anything we had seen before. When we first came upon the crater lake it didn’t feel large at all but then we spotted a couple of people walking around its perimeter on the lowest level and they were well and truly dwarfed by their surroundings.

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