Lal Lal Iron Mine and Smelting Works

[3] The gold boom created a market for mining machinery and led to foundries being set up in Ballarat.

This company and the rival Phoenix Foundry also made locomotives for the Victorian Railways,[4] There was a local demand for scrap-iron and pig-iron in the Ballarat area.

Pig iron was imported, often serving as ballast on sailing ships coming to Australia, and so sold for low prices.

Lignite (brown coal) was discovered around 1857, located just alongside the later route of the Geelong to Ballarat Railway.

The iron ore varied in depth from 2 to 4 metres and covered an area of approximately 10.6 hectares.

[11] Based on the above analysis, the iron metal content was relatively low, but was high enough to excite interest in mining and smelting the ore.

[18] Lack of money—not all the shares on offer were taken up by the public—prevented the construction of the tramway[16] and the company resorted to using bullock teams over the poor roads to and from the mine site.

[20] The company had produced 127 tonnes of pig iron by January 1876 and constructed 805 metres of cart-road up the steep incline on the lease.

[25] In September 1878, the company was trying to get cheap rates for rail transport and proposing to make iron pipes.

[29] On 30 July 1880, the half-yearly meeting of the company was told that work had commenced on new furnace, which was capable of making 80 tons of iron per week, and that new blowing apparatus was being manufactured.

The furnace worked until it had made 350 tons and then heavy rains arrived and disrupted road transport—the tramway to the rail siding was still not yet built.

[32] The company was able to purchase second-hand rails and other iron hardware items that were needed to construct the tramway, from the Victorian Railways Department.

[33] In October 1883, the company cast iron pipes—said at the time to be, but not,[34] the first made in Victoria—at its Urquart Street Ballarat foundry.

However, matters came to a head when the Railway Department began pressing for payment for the rails and other hardware that the company had used to build the tramway.

It was decided at an extraordinary general meeting of members held in Ballarat on 8 July 1889 to wind up the Limited Company.

[38] An auction sale was advertised in July 1891, clearly with the intention of selling it as a going concern—there is information about a lease of the tramway right-of-way up to 1893.

[38] The foundry at Urquart St, Ballarat, under different ownership, continued in operation until 1898, when the building became a bakery.

[46] Probably the same company—described as 'The Victorian Central Coal and Iron Mining Company, No Liability'—were putting down bore holes In Feb 1913[47] In May 1913, the wealthy industrialist H.V.

This was already an archaic technology by the 1880s, because 'hot blast' furnaces—invented in 1828—greatly reduced fuel consumption and increased furnace capacity.

A major disadvantage of 'cold-blast', 'open top' technology is that the furnace off-gases—especially combustible and highly poisonous carbon-monoxide—are not recycled (as fuel to heat a hot-blast 'stove' or the blower engine boiler) but are vented instead to the immediate environment.

The only advantages of a 'cold blast' furnace were a lower initial capital cost—which may have been a critical factor for Lal Lal—and a less complex operation.

[24] It was upgraded with new boiler and air blast machinery, in 1878, but its output was still well short of the 80 to 100 tons per week that the company believed it needed for commercial operation.

It is only recently that attempts have been made to make iron using lignite and the technology has not been in commercial production to date.

The most challenging part of the tramway was the descent to the blast furnace site, which was a remarkable piece of surveying.

The product was cast into a stamper head at John Walker's foundry and found to have wear-resistant properties.

[4] The chairman of the company, Mr. Kelly, stated in October 1878 that, "we were awarded a gold medal at the Paris Exhibition when competing against the product of the most perfect appliances in the world.

Originally, as shown by a photograph taken in 1882, the upper part also included an outer casing made of stone, which was square in horizontal section and tapered evenly with increasing height.

[51] There is also a rare 'Cornish flue', essentially a chimney made of stone that was built at ground level but which rises with the natural incline of the terrain.

It probably had the function of removing smoke and noxious gases from the immediate area around the blast furnace.

[63] Below the furnace ruin, downhill toward the river, there is a large dump of slag produced during iron-making operations.