| Kambalda History |
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The area around Kambalda was first explored in 1863 by Henry Maxwell Lefroy who was looking for pastoral land to the east of the Yilgarn. Lefroy's report encouraged further exploration and in 1864 an expedition led by Charles Cooke Hunt, passed by a salt lake which he named Lake Lefroy (after his predecessor). In December 1896, Pierce Larkin, a prospector who was part of the rush to Coolgardie, discovered 106 ounces of gold near Red Hill on the northern shores of Lake Lefroy. The town of Kamblada was officially proclaimed on December 10, 1897 although the residents continued to refer to it as Red Hill or Red Hill camp. The following year when the Red Hill (WA) Gold Syndicate was formed to promote underground mining in the area, the alluvial riches of the area were exhausted. By 1906, the company (now known as The Red Hill, Westralia, Gold Mines Limited) withdrew from the field due to declining rates of gold recovery. By this time, the town had a population of around 1,000 with 30 buildings, and streets named after the first mining lease holders.
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Small mining operations continued around the Kambalda area but the Red Hill camp came to a close in the first decade of the twentieth century. After the First World War, a surge of prospectors worked the areas north and south of Lake Lefroy, and while significant findings led to the establishment of new mining centres (such as St Ives) these were short lived. Prospecting continued into the 1930s, as men moved into the area to escape the effects of the depression. The most famous find at this time was the largest gold nugget yet found in Australia: the "Golden Eagle" nugget. The nugget was uncovered by Jim Larcombe at Larkinville, near Widgemootha in 1931. News of this spectacular find attracted prospectors from all over the country, one of whom, George Cowcill, would later be responsible for the discovery of nickel at Kambalda. In 1954, Cowcill had been prospecting in the area for uranium, and he sent rock samples to the School of Mines in Kalgoorlie to be analysed. The samples contained traces of nickel. The find encouraged the Western Mining Corporation Group to undertake a comprehensive geological survey of the area, and in 1966 they announced that they would commence nickel mining at Kambalda. Kambalda became a brand new town without the primitive conditions that hampered its namesake in the gold rush days. Power initially came from the Fimiston station at Kalgoorlie and water was supplied by connection from the Coolgardie-Norseman pipeline. New buildings went up over the old town site as there were no longer any remnants to identify the former settlement. When Western Mining became aware that they had used the exact site of the former town, they took pains to ensure that the town plan corresponded to the original street layout. By the end of 1967 the new town was too small for the proposed venture, so planning included an additional site and the two towns were named Kambalda East and Kambalda West. The two towns continued to grow throughout the following year, and their combined population reached 2,000. As the 1960s drew to a close, Western Mining was still expanding its drilling operations while its milling facility brought further profit from other companies mining in the Widgemootha, Coolgardie and Carnilya Hill areas. The two Kambaldas grew to a population of 3,200 and a workforce of 1,335. As with earlier gold discoveries, initial success led to a speculative boom on the share markets. This was the case with Poseidon, after their discovery of nickel at Windarra, their shares rose from $1 in September 1969 to $200 in December of that year. The 1970s saw the collapse of the nickel market as well as an expansion of nickel mining in Canada and South Africa. These factors, along with a global economic recession, led to a downturn in nickel production. Although stockpiles and retrenchments inevitably followed, Western Mining continued its exploration activities and diversified into gold production in the Kambalda area. The decline of the international nickel market and steadily rising gold prices throughout the late 1970s set the stage for Kambalda's second gold boom 70 years after the original field had been abandoned.
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