Moore brothers reflect on nickel boom and now bust as BHP’s Kalgoorlie smelter shuts down – by BJarrod Lucas (Australian Broadcasting Corporation – October 10, 2024)

https://www.abc.net.au/

A profile image of a man with dark, spiky hair.

Brothers Donald and Tim Moore lived through the country’s first nickel boom in Western Australia’s resources-rich Goldfields. The metal’s discovery near Kambalda in the 1960s sparked a modern-day renaissance for the historic mining region built on its 1890s gold rush.

It set the brothers on different paths that were heavily influenced by the “magic metal” of the day. Donald, 60, worked extensively in gold mining and spent 13 years at the Kalgoorlie Nickel Smelter, while his 59-year-old brother Tim has documented the region’s ups and downs as a historian with the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder.

Another chapter in that history was written this week with production at the smelter ending after more than half a century of continuous production since 1973.

Nickel was king’

When the Moore family moved to Coolgardie in 1977, depressed gold prices had reduced Kalgoorlie’s famous Golden Mile to a single operation — the Mount Charlotte underground mine. As Tim Moore puts it, “nickel was king”.

For the rest of this article: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-11/moore-brothers-see-nickel-boom-bust-as-kalgoorlie-smelter-shuts/104404488