Qualla: Mount Tom Price Mine

Mount Tom Price Mine: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bäras, CC BY-SA 3.0. Thomas Moore Price never saw the mountain that bears his name. An executive at the American firm Kaiser Steel, he was one of the people who pushed to develop the rich iron deposits buried in Western Australia's remote north - and he died shortly after word reached him that promising ore had been found in the Hamersley Range. The discovery he helped set in motion became Mount Tom Price, the first iron mine of the Pilbara and the seed of an industry that would reshape the Australian economy. In 1966, the first ore rolled out by rail to the coast. Sixty years later, the trains have never really stopped.

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Image: Bäras | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mount Tom Price Mine: Where the Boom Began

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bäras, CC BY-SA 3.0. Rio Tinto's iron operations in the Pilbara began here, in 1966, when Hamersley Iron opened the mine and built a town beside it to house the workers. Mount Tom Price was first - the original pit, the proof that this hard, red, almost waterless country held wealth on a scale few ha...

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Image: Bäras | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mount Tom Price Mine: The Top Town in the State

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bäras, CC BY-SA 3.0. The town of Tom Price grew up to serve the mine, and it grew up high. At 747 metres above sea level it is the highest town in Western Australia, a fact locals wear with pride and a nickname: the Top Town. It sits in the lee of a peak the surveyors once labelled, with blunt honest...

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Image: Bäras | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mount Tom Price Mine: From Pit to Port

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bäras, CC BY-SA 3.0. An iron mine is only as useful as the railway that empties it. At Mount Tom Price the ore is blasted from open pits, then crushed and screened into two products: lump, capped at 31.5 millimetres, and finer material capped at 6.3. From there it joins the relentless procession down...

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Image: Bäras | CC BY-SA 3.0

Mount Tom Price Mine: An Old Mine, A New Grid

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bäras, CC BY-SA 3.0. Six decades in, the mine that launched the Pilbara is reinventing how it runs. Rio Tinto has been building a large battery system at Mount Tom Price - a 45-megawatt installation designed to act as a 'virtual synchronous machine,' steadying the remote electricity grid that powers ...

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Image: Bäras | CC BY-SA 3.0