When I made a quick visit to the Eyre Peninsula in late 2023 with Maleko, our standard poodle, we camped overnight at Iron Knob in South Australia’s Middleback Range. I wanted to spend some time walking around this old mining town to see what was left. I had briefly visited it in passing through the old industrial area of the upper Spence Gulf a decade or so ago and my memories of it had evolved into a dystopian figure.

There is a lot of history in the Iron knob mining area. The Iron Knob, Iron Monarch and Iron Duke mines with their rich deposits of iron ore (magnetite  and  haematite) were owned by BHP, who extracted the ore deposits  from 1899 to 1998. The iron ore was for export via the Whyalla port from 1903 and for smelting at the Whyalla Steelworks after 1941.The latter was also owned by BHP until 2000, when it was spun off into OneSteel, then Arrium, who subsequently sold it to the Liberty Steel Group in 2017.

Liberty Steel had big plans re the modernization of the plant (an electric arc furnace) and expanding the capacity to  supply steel for the nation’s rail and construction industries. There have been ongoing problems with re-financing and damages to the blast furnace with Liberty Steel in debt, losing money. and struggling to pay its creditors.

In 1998 BHP closed the Iron Knob mines and handed the administration of the town back to the local residents. The remaining residents purchased the local Post Office, improved the local caravan and campsite, and established a visitor centre run by volunteers.

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