In Melbourne, the heartland of Australian mining investment, he interested a syndicate of capitalists, including James Smith Reid, in a scheme to purchase his leases, to build smelting works and to construct a private railway more than 150 kilometres (93 mi) from the government railhead at Mareeba to the mines and smelter.

A company called Chillagoe Proprietary Limited was formed in Melbourne and placed its proposal before the Queensland Government.

Before the end of 1897, the Mareeba to Chillagoe Railway Act authorised the company to carry out its plans and granted it generous concessions.

[1] Construction on the smelter site commenced in mid 1900 while the railway work was underway, and proceeded slowly, as all materials had to be carried overland from the advancing railhead which reached Chillagoe in August 1901.

[1] In mid 1900 the Chillagoe Company had operating: three boilers, three steam engines 46 horsepower (34 kW), one active reduction works, two pumps, 0.5 miles (0.80 km) of 2-foot (0.61 m) tramway, 2,600 feet (790 m) of water mains, two brick machines, one clay mill, two saw benches, one traction engine, and a dam constructed, valued at a total of £4,120.

Walkers of Maryborough contracted for the iron frames of the furnaces and Jack and Newell were agents for a large amount of the smaller material for the construction of the smelters.

The proposed smelting plant being erected under the supervision of J. M. Higgins (former metallurgist of Dry Creek Works, South Australia) and R. Shepherd (the construction engineer who had supervised the erection of the Mount Lyell smelters) was to treat 100 long tons (100 t) of ore per day and comprise six furnaces.

The new copper furnace was blown in on 20 February 1908 and the converter plant was operating effectively by early March that year.

A heavy duty horizontal compound condensing steam engine with duplex air cylinders could blow two converter stands at once.

[1] Heavy rain on the Etheridge watershed washed away the Tate and Lynd River railway bridges[6] and the Chillagoe smelters had to close between 19 April and 3 May 1911.

This was the World War I boom time for metal prices and other copper smelting companies, especially in the Cloncurry district, experienced the greatest prosperity they had ever known while Chillagoe was closed.

In 1932 Chillagoe produced its highest ever annual copper output of over 3,000 long tons (3,000 t), but 1933 was the last year of lead production from stockpiled ores.

In 1942 the Australian government conducted a review of base metal production throughout Australia, and in the cold light of wartime emergency, the Chillagoe smelters showed up badly.

The controller of Mineral Production directed Mount Isa Mines to commence producing copper and this occurred in April 1943.

[1] By the time of the final closure the total debt was over £453,451, the figure on 31 March 1940 when the Co-ordinator General decided not to spend any more money on the Chillagoe smelters from the Income (State Development) Tax funds.

Small machines and tools went to the Collinsville State Coal Mine in 1946 and secondhand bricks were sold off to private buyers.

The Queensland Government wrote off the figure of £2,832 on 30 June 1954 when the only remaining assets were an unsaleable building valued at £50 and the annual rent of a horse paddock for £10.

[1] Adjacent to the main smelter area is the power house, workshops and water softener plant foundations.

[1] From the smelter and pre-treatment areas the surface of a large slag dump extends eastward to the bank of Chillagoe Creek.

[1] The surviving plant includes:[1] Chillagoe Smelters was listed on the Queensland Heritage Register on 21 October 1992 having satisfied the following criteria.

For much of the period from 1901 to 1943 the Chillagoe smelters and their ancillary industries were major components of the economic activity of the Cairns hinterland.

[1] "... the legacy of this grandly inept company was the infrastructure of an entire mineral industry which the State could never have afforded to build for itself, and which functioned in the public interest for over twenty years at very little capital cost.

Under both the company and the State, the Chillagoe venture created thousands of jobs, provided railway transport over enormous distances, and kept mines and businesses open throughout the north.

Although the Chillagoe smelters never once made a profit, the multiplier effects radiating from them were responsible for a significant proportion of North Queensland's prosperity for nearly fifty years.

In the last years the smelters were deliberately being run at a loss by the State in order to continue this economic role in the wider community".

The size, scale and evidence of, now rare, smelting processes are preserved in the physical remains at the Chillagoe smelters.

[1] Although the site has been stripped of most of its plant, what remains is sufficient to interpret the operation of the smelters, working conditions and health and safety considerations at Chillagoe.

The Chillagoe smelters are an excellent demonstration of the technology of mineral (copper, silver, lead and gold) smelting at the turn of the century, when up-to-date plant was, assembled and then modified repeatedly between 1901 and 1911 to meet local conditions.

[1] The place has a special association with the life or work of a particular person, group or organisation of importance in Queensland's history.

The Chillagoe smelters are associated with the careers of mining entrepreneurs, John Moffat and J. S. Reid, with the development of the Amalgamated Workers Association, and with the political affairs of Labor leaders, William McCormack and Edward Theodore, whose careers were ruined by the Mungana Affair.