Bogolong iron mine and blast furnace
[1] In 1874, the blast furnace produced a small amount of pig iron—sufficient to allow its testing—that was smelted[2] from iron ore mined nearby.
[8] By the 1870s, the Main Southern Railway was being extended and, by 1876, would reach Binalong, which is approximately 15 km north of the Bogolong site by road, providing access to Sydney and Melbourne.
It was noted that, "The deposit is probably of considerable extent, but its dimensions cannot be correctly ascertained on account of the bed-rock in the vicinity being hidden from view by alluvium".
Plans for a larger company—the Bogolong Charcoal Ironworks Company[16][17]—to operate commercially, never eventuated[2] and the furnace and mine were abandoned.
[8] In August 1875, it was reported that English capitalists, after testing a sample of Bogolong ore, were interested in buying the mine,[11][18] but nothing came of those plans.
It had a square base, three tuyeres and an arched hearth (on the southern side) through which iron and slag were tapped onto an adjacent casting floor.
[2] The fire bricks proved completely unsuitable and failed rapidly once smelting began; that being a reason that so little iron was produced.
[20] Limestone—used as a smelting flux—was mined locally, reportedly from within the company's lease,[21] although its precise source is unknown today.
[9] The iron pigs produced in March and May 1874 were of high quality; when examined in Albury, the first five pigs made were reportedly "far superior to that of the Ilfracombe Iron Mine"[14]—an iron-making venture in Northern Tasmania that had carried out a trial smelting of its ore in Melbourne in 1872.
[4] The blast furnace ruin, casting floor and some other remnants are nearby on a piece of flat land—a man-made terrace—that is part way down a southward-facing slope that ends at a wide sandy stretch of Jugiong Creek.
[2] The outer shell of the furnace ruin was still complete in 1993, but the fire bricks of the inner lining largely had been pilfered over the years.
