Kidston
A modern gold mining community.
Kidston lies 110 km south of Mount Surprise on a less than perfect dirt road. It is nothing more than a gold mining community with minimal facilities and a sense of old style harsh conditions and rough living. It's chief claim to fame is that, until recently, the town was the biggest gold producer in Australia. It has an average annual production of between 200 000 and 300 000 ounces of pure gold all of which is now mined by open cut and crushed and refined at the local works. So successful has the mine been that the capital outlay for establishing the new operation (some $140 million) was paid off less than three years after the new mine was opened in 1985.

Gold was first discovered in the area in the 1880s but the location was kept a secret. It wasn't until the alluvial field was opened in 1907 that prospectors arrived to try their luck. The field proved to be rich and over the next three years an estimated 622 000 grams of gold were mined.

The field was operated at the time as a number of small holdings. By 1915 many of these small holdings had amalgamated to form larger companies.

Sometimes referred to as The Oaks Goldfield, Kidston had its own battery by the early 1920s. Built by the Queensland government the 15 head battery with a gas engine and two generators is still standing at the site of the current mining operation. It has been listed for preservation by the National Trust. Thus Kidston today is a rare combination of the old and the new.

The mine was converted to open cut in 1921 and mining continued until 1945 when the mine closed down. There was some interest in reopening the mine in the 1960s but it wasn't until 1979 that the Kidston Gold Mines applied to the Queensland government to start full production again.

Since 1985 the mine has been working at full capacity. Miners work 12 hour shifts for 7 days and then have 7 days off. This means that the town has no permanent community. Miners either drive in or are flown in from Atherton - where the head offices of the mining company are located. Old mining towns like Herberton have become residential addresses for miners who work at Kidston. Some of the local graziers and their sons work in the mines as a way of supplementing the unreliable returns from the land.

There was a plan to build a township but Kidston Gold Mines decided to build quarters for the workers - basically portable motel-style units and a huge canteen which the miners call the 'Hotel'. There are no tours of the mine.