Rum Jungle or Unrungkoolpum is a locality in the Northern Territory of Australia, about 105 kilometres south of Darwin on the East Branch of the Finniss River.

[5][6] The European name for this area derives from an incident in March 1873 when miners from the nearby John Bull goldmine met a teamster who was carting stores between Southport and Pine Creek.

[4] Those new arrivals exposed the local Aboriginal people, the Kungarakan and Warai, to a variety of illnesses and diseases, including smallpox, leprosy and tuberculosis.

[16] The reward was offered due to an increased demand for uranium following World War II, and the United States and Britain had identified Australia as a potential source.

[17] White was a buffalo shooter, crocodile hunter and prospector, who ran a small farm in the area with his Aboriginal partner, whose name has not been disclosed.

[18][19][20][21] In 1952, the Australian Government funded the setting up of a mine and treatment plant to provide uranium oxide concentrate to the UK-US Combined Development Agency under a contract which ran from 1953 to 1962.

[22][23] The mine was officially opened on 17 September 1954 by the Prime Minister Robert Menzies, who promised that "[t]he world will forget about atomic bombs and concentrate on using uranium for the benefit of humankind" while also talking about its importance in terms of the defence of Australia.

[29][30] The mine was the responsibility of Commonwealth Government, through the Australian Atomic Energy Commission, although management of it was by Territory Enterprises Pty Limited, a subsidiary of the Rio Tinto Group, on a contract basis.

[4][31][32] A total of 863,000 tonnes of uranium ore were processed and much was sold on the open market; some of this was also stockpiled and held in storage at Lucas Heights Reactor in Sydney.

That led to the mine becoming known as one of Australia's most polluted environments,[23] due to the oxidation of sulphides and the release of acid and metals into the east branch of the Finniss River.

[citation needed] An initial attempt to clean up Rum Jungle was made in 1977, following the Ranger Uranium Environmental Inquiry (1976 - 1977), which led to the setting-up of a working group to examine more comprehensive rehabilitation.

[36] The Northern Territory and Federal Governments continued to argue over responsibility for funding rehabilitation on the polluted East Finniss River.

During question time in the Northern Territory Parliament on 4 May 2006, Kon Vatskalis, the Minister for Mines and Energy, announced the approval as "good news".

Nonetheless, Compass acknowledged that, at some future point, it would be interested in mining uranium at the nearby Rum Jungle site, over which it held a lease.

Ore deposits occur in Precambrian carbonaceous slate and graphitic schist of the Lower Proterozoic Brooks Creek Group.