Mount Carbine
Reputedly named after the horse that won the 1890 Melbourne Cup, Mount Carbine is around seventy kilometres north-northwest of Mareeba, one hundred and twenty kilometres south of Cooktown, and just over 35 kilometres west of Port Douglas. The former mining town, located in Muluridji country within the Mareeba Shire, was established after wolframite was discovered on the slopes of Carbine Hill in 1890.
The field was worked almost entirely by individual prospectors until John Moffat's Irvinebank company bought into Mount Carbine in 1906, and production increased rapidly in the years before World War I.
In its heyday, Mt. Carbine had a population of around three hundred hundred, three hotels, a police station, a school, a post office, and a hospital, as well as a variety of small businesses (bakery, butchery, general store, drapery, cordials factory, barber, billiard saloon), freight and transport carriers, a blacksmith, and three stamping mills.
Although the mines ceased operations in 1914, they were briefly reopened after World War I but never recovered after the world’s wolframite markets collapsed in 1919. As a result, Mt. Carbine was largely deserted with intermittent spurts of activity before a significant revival in the 1970s saw the district's population surge to four hundred miners and their families.
Wolfram prices started to fall after 1980, and the mine was mothballed in November 1986 until February 1993, when the remaining plant and equipment were disposed of,
Today, the locality includes several protected areas and national parks, including:
- Mount Windsor National Park
- Mount Lewis National Park
- Mount Spurgeon National Park
- Brooklyn Sanctuary is a nature reserve owned by the not-for-profit Australian Wildlife Conservancy, which includes some former mine sites.
Links to add:
Carbine Hill
John Moffat
Mount Windsor National Park
Mount Lewis National Park
Mount Spurgeon National Park
Brooklyn Sanctuary
