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The Economic Times
The Economic Times
National
Team Global

Mary Kathleen’s uranium town still had 212 homes when its mine closed in 1982; the company settlement was dismantled and auctioned off in 1983

For a town to simply vanish is quite disturbing. Mary Kathleen, situated in the Selwyn Range of outback Queensland, was a mining settlement with schools, a movie theatre, a golf course and numerous homes. Geologists A.D. McKay and Y. Miezitis, in a mineral resource report published by Geoscience Australia, described it as an artificial town created to service the Mary Kathleen uranium mine. The township was built close to the open-cut mine and grew alongside the mining operation. When the mine closed for the second and final time in 1982, the township was dismantled rather than left to deteriorate. Many buildings and other structures were removed, leaving behind roads, concrete foundations and other remnants.

A company town with only one aim

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