Mount Mulligan
Located in Djangun/Djankun country within the Mareeba Shire, 85 kilometres due west of Kuranda, 60 kilometres west-northwest of Mareeba, and just over 95 kilometres from Cairns, the former coal-mining town of Mount Mulligan was the scene of Queensland's worst mine disaster.
The escarpment from which the town and mine took their name was named after prospector James Venture Mulligan by his colleagues on the 1874 expedition investigating what later became the Hodgkinson River goldfield.
the tableland, ... which the other members of the party insisted on calling MOUNT MULLIGAN ... overhanging the Hodgkinson valley, extends south-eastward from the junction of the HODGKINSON with the MITCHELL for 23 miles, is apparently of Permo-Carboniferous age and consists mainly of horizontal beds of sandstone, with a seam of COAL. (Robert Logan Jack, Northmost Australia, p. 429)
Local miners identified the coal seams that outcrop on the escarpment's eastern face in 1907, and mining commenced shortly afterwards. By the start of World War I, a railway line had connected the mine to Dimbulah, and a town was beginning to take shape. By the end of the War, the town had a brickmaking plant, a dam on top of the mountain and a coking plant with a ventilation plant in the mine's No. 3 adit.
In 1920, the town had a population of more than 300, housed in workers' cottages, with substantial homes for the management staff, two hotels, a Church, a school and five stores. However, with the railway line to Dimbulah as the town's only link to the rest of Queensland, it remained isolated
The underground coal dust explosion on 19 September 1921, when seventy-five miners lost their lives, left the town temporarily deserted, and although the mine re-opened in 1922, the Chillagoe Company, which operated it, went into liquidation in 1923. While the Queensland Government took over the operations, the mine was inefficient, and much of the coal was unsuitable for coking. Production declined steadily after the coke works were dismantled in 1925. Although the local Union took over the operation in 1929, maintenance issues and marketing problems saw production continue to decline.
While the town experienced some positive developments in the 1950s — including a new hospital and post office, a Roman Catholic Church, town power generated by diesel generators, and a road link to Dimbulah — the main mine closed in 1957 due to subsidence and ventilation difficulties that were too expensive to overcome. A new mine — the King Cole — opened by Tableland Tin Dredging to fuel its steam dredge, closed when a large section of the cliff threatened to fall on the surface workings, and the dredge began using electricity. External factors also played a part. The Tully Falls hydroelectric plant was about to join the region's power grid, and Queensland Railways was in the process of changing from steam to diesel, so the mine's days were always numbered.
The town was abandoned after the Chillagoe railway, which connected Mount Mulligan with Dimbulah, closed in January 1958.
