Roxby Downs Surface Tours

Flying into South Australia's Far-North you're reminded how big this State is. But landing at Roxby Downs you start to redefine your understanding of "BIG". It's the home of the Olympic Dam Mine - the largest accumulation of Uranium and Copper in the World. The orebody was discovered in 1975 on the Roxby Downs Station north of Woomera. The successful drill site was near the property's dam which was built in 1956 during the Melbourne Games - so it was named Olympic Dam. To guage the size of the orebody imagine starting at the West End Brewery on Port Road and spreading right through the Parklands and the square mile of Adelaide that's what is under the red earth at Olympic Dam. Forget the old stories of mineshafts and ponies - you take the four-wheel drive straight into this mine. There's currently 120 kilometres of underground tunnels attacking the load. The ore body can be described as like a fruit cake ... and mining for base metals is like trying to pick the fruit out and leave the cake there. It's a process they call "stoping" meaning drilling the ore out (incidentally those drilling rigs go for a million dollars a pop).

"Near the Township this is what is called a Grizzly ... it processes 35 tonne rocks 2 kilometres undergound ... the idea is it sorts out huge rocks down one path to crush down to football size copper so it looks like green and gold in it ... there is probably a little bit of gold in there too." From there the ore is further crushed so those washing machine size blocks will be eventually milled down to the consistency of icing sugar. This process goes on dragging out 500- tonnes per hour - 24 hours a day 365 days per year. This is the fifth largest copper deposit in the world ... there's almost as much gold here as the golden mile in Western Australia and more silver than Broken hill. Once on the surface the ore is processed - it's unusual for a mine and process plant to be on the same location - making Roxby Downs the largest set up like this in Australia and perhaps the world! Copper is the primary product and the smelting process is spectacular. From this process gold and silver are separated. One and a half thousand tonnes of pure copper leaves Olympic Dam each week to be shipped around the world. Also shipped overseas is uranium and silver ... and almost a by-product of the refining is a house brick sized gold bar that is produced every week worth about $350,000. Western Mining owns Olympic Dam outright and a few weeks ago announced they will spend one and a half billion dollars expanding the site over the next 15 months.

Currently the Mine earns the State about 250-million dollars a year and Geologists reckon they've just scratched the surface. If you are planning a holiday to the State's far North and have an interest in the Mine then tours are available. They last two and a half hours and start in the Town and then proceed to the Mine site. The company that runs them is Olympic Dam Tours and bookings are advised - you can call them on (08) 8671 0788. For more information email: info@postcards.sa.com.au