Qualla: Whim Creek Copper Mine

Whim Creek Copper Mine: Introduction

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unbekannte Autoren und Grafiker; Scan vom EDHAC e.V., Public domain. Two large diesel engines from World War One submarines sit at the Whim Creek copper mine site. They were brought here in the 1960s by Japanese interests conducting a resource drilling programme — not the strangest journey an object has taken in the Pilbara, but memorable. The engine blocks are still visible on site. They powered the ore processing equipment for a decade before the operation shut down in the early 1970s. They were left behind, which is fitting for a mine that has been opened, worked, closed, and handed to new owners roughly every generation since copper was first discovered here in 1872.

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Image: Unbekannte Autoren und Grafiker; Scan vom EDHAC e.V. | Public domain

Whim Creek Copper Mine: A Hundred and Twenty Years of Copper

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown photographer, Public domain. Copper was found near the town of Whim Creek in 1872, gold twenty kilometres north in 1887. By 1882, artisanal miners were already extracting small quantities of malachite, azurite, and chrysocolla — the blue-green copper carbonate minerals that are characteristic of the oxidised...

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Image: Unknown photographer | Public domain

Whim Creek Copper Mine: What Lies Underground

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rolinator at English Wikipedia, Public domain. The Whim Creek Group — the geological formation hosting the ore bodies — is approximately 2.9 to 2.8 billion years old, part of the ancient Pilbara Craton. Two volcanogenic massive sulfide deposits are extracted here: Mons Cupri (Latin for 'copper mountain') and Whim Creek itself...

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Image: Rolinator at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Whim Creek Copper Mine: The Modern Operation

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rolinator at English Wikipedia, Public domain. The Straits-era mine was an open-cut heap leach operation — ore blasted and trucked from two pits to a central processing facility, crushed to less than 20 millimetres, stacked six metres high on plastic-lined pads, then irrigated with dilute sulphuric acid. The copper dissolved ...

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Image: Rolinator at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Whim Creek Copper Mine: The River Problem

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rolinator at English Wikipedia, Public domain. In 2019, while the mine sat idle in care and maintenance, small-scale reprocessing of existing stockpiles was underway. Monitoring detected copper levels of 3.5 milligrams per litre in the local drinking water drawn from the Balla Balla River — well above the permitted level of 0...

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Image: Rolinator at English Wikipedia | Public domain