Better Than Gold

Gold is for the mistress

--silver for the maid--Copper for the craftsman

cunning at his trade.

Good! said the Baron,

sitting in his hall, But Iron--Cold Iron--is master of them all.

--Rudyard Kipling

First the hardy prospectors came to parched and desolate Western Australia for gold in the 1850s. Then began a century of boom and bust that brought successive waves of fortune hunters seeking silver, tin, lead and later uranium and bauxite. But the find with the richest potential of all was iron ore.

In 1957, Stan Hilditch, a manganese prospector, stumbled across an iron-ore outcropping near Mount Newman that assayed at almost the maximum possible purity. Australians had long known that iron ore could be mined in their country, but not until finds like Hilditch's did they suspect that it existed in such phenomenal abundance - an estimated 20 billion tons, about one-twelfth of the world's known reserves. Three years later, Australian legislators repealed a ban on iron-ore exports once enacted in the belief that there was only enough for domestic needs. Two big iron-ore mines opened up and, following the pattern of previous mineral exploitations, were dominated by British and U.S. interests.

Last week Australian pride was finally served. In a ceremony that was televised by satellite to audiences in Manhattan, Tokyo and London, as well as all over Australia, Governor General Sir Paul Hasluck officially opened the

Mount Newman mine, which is 60% Australian owned. Under his feet was Australia's largest known iron-ore deposit, an estimated 1 billion tons, enough to make about 563 million tons of steel, or almost as much as the entire world produced last year.

Mile-Long Trains. In the project, the two principal Australian companies --Broken Hill Proprietary Co. and Colonial Sugar Refining Co.--have an impressive line-up of international partners. American Metal Climax has a 25% interest; Japan's Mitsui and C. Itoh and Britain's Selection Trust Ltd. hold lesser shares. Their hardest job has been to get the ore out from the Mount Newman area, which is 780 miles by road from the nearest large city, Perth. In just 14 months, U.S. and Canadian companies laid down 265 miles of railroad track to connect the site with Port Hedland, which until the iron boom had been a decaying northwestern port on waters swarming with deadly stonefish, sea snakes and sharks. When a despondent prospector blew himself up on the front porch of the Esplanade Hotel a decade ago, he disturbed only half a dozen people.

Port Hedland today has a population of 5,000, new schools, motels, a drive-in cinema and facilities to handle the mile-long trains that chug in from the mines. It also has an air of rough and easy freedom that is attractive to the miners after the tight discipline of Mount Newman and other camps.

International Clientele. At nearby Nelson Point, the mining group dredged a deep-water channel, which can now accommodate 68,000-ton ships and is being enlarged to handle two 100,000-ton vessels at a time. The 3,500 workers who built the town, the mine, the railroad and 220-acre shipping facilities earned wages that were high by Australian standards because of the hardships and isolation--$80 a week for a shoveler, $100 for more skilled workers. Today the company employs 1,700.

The first shipments of ore from Por1 Hedland went to Japan, which will be Mount Newman's biggest customer. The Japanese have contracted for 146 million tons, worth $1.2 billion, over the next 15 years. European steel mills have agreed to buy 1.5 million tons by 1989, while 70 million tons will go to Australian mills. Australian steelmen are also considering building enormous integrated mills that would be fed by Mount Newman and other western iron mines. When that happens, proud Australia will indeed be master of her vast iron reserves.

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