The Aurukun Bauxite Deposit
by Dave Kimble, www.peakoil.org.au

Map of Aurukun Region of Australia
Source : © IMC (2004) 		Background

The mining lease ML7032 was originally awarded to a mining consortium called Aurukun Associates in 1975, with the stipulation that they develop the resource before 1983. The date was then extended to 1988, but no development started.

In 2003 the Queensland Government resumed the lease and the area was renamed "RA315". It is approximately 85 Km north-to-south and 25 Km east-to-west, and is estimated to have 330 million tonnes of bauxite.


In 2004 the Government commissioned a report by International Mining Consultants which summarised the publicly available information on the resource, and concluded that it was insufficient to accurately define the resource to modern standards. They recommended that a detailled survey, worth $9.3 million be done to firm up the numbers.
(I am not sure if this went ahead)

The Government put out calls for expressions of interest in developing the RA315 deposit, and got 11 responses, of which the Chalco proposal was named as preferred developer. The Government needs more details before approval for Aurukun mine is given.

The Archer and Watson Rivers Aurukun Region

Aurukun large scale

Federal Government's Environmental On-Line Reporting Tool


Source : © IMC (2004) 		Mining tenements in the locality

Looking eastwards

from the www.TeamBeattie.com website during the last election campaign :

 http://www.teambeattie.com/db_download/Wild_Rivers_04_01_28.pdf

Our commitments at a glance

A re-elected Beattie Government will introduce stand alone legislation to ensure our wild rivers are protected via:
  • Allowing limited agricultural, urban and industrial development, eg smallscale “eco-friendly” tourism development would be encouraged
  • Strictly limited and regulated water allocations or water extractions from wild rivers
  • No new dams or weirs permitted on a wild river or its main tributaries. Flow control activities such as stream alignment, desnagging (other than for safety reasons) and levee banks will not be permitted
  • Further developments on floodplains must not restrict floodplain flows
  • Protection of associated wetlands
  • No stocking of wild rivers with non-endemic species
  • No use of exotic plant species in ponded pastures
  • New off-stream storages to be limited in capacity, for example for stock and domestic purposes
  • No new in-stream mining activities. Any out-of-stream mining in the region will be subject to Environmental Impact Assessments

Examples of Queensland’s rivers which could be designated as Wild Rivers include the following:
  • Archer River system
  • Coleman River system
  • Ducie River system
  • Fraser Island streams
  • Gregory (Nicholson basin)
  • Hinchinbrook Island streams
  • Holroyd River system
  • Jacky Jacky Creek
  • Jardine River
  • Jeannie River
  • Lockhart River
  • Morning Inlet streams
  • Olive & Pascoe Rivers
  • Settlement Creek system
  • Staaten River
  • Stewart River
  • Watson River
  • Wenlock River
Final designation of Wild Rivers will be determined through extensive community consultation and introduction of the legislation.


Aurukun exempted from Wild Rivers Act The Wild Rivers Act as passed October 2005


As the bauxite is generally found embedded in a matrix of kaolin clay, the two materials have to be separated by screening with lots of water. The IMC Report suggests the mining operation will need 12 x 800,000 gallon/day bores at a depth of about 1,000 metres, which would represent a maximum capacity of 16 billion litres per year. It is unknown whether this water is really available. One would have to wonder about the ecological impact of bringing 16 gigalitres to the surface, dirtying it with kaolin and then putting it in the wetland streams.

The IMC Report also says that the local rivers incise the bauxite layer, which is generally from 2 to 12 metres below ground level. Thus digging up the bauxite layer will have to interfere with the normal stream operation, whether it is called "in-stream mining" or "river diversion" or "off-stream ponding". None of these operations would be allowed under the Wild Rivers Act if it did not specifically exempt the project.

It is not possible to strip mine for bauxite without seriously damaging the nationally important wetlands of the Aurukun-Archer-Watson area and the pristine wild rivers that Peter Beattie promised to protect at the last election.

Dave Kimble

The IMC Report is :
"Review of the Aurukun Bauxite Resource North Queensland"
For: Queensland Government Department of State Development and Innovation
Date: August 2004
Project No: 00724
Report No: IMC0997
Prepared by: J. Horton
IMC Consultants Pty Ltd
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Fax: 07 3229 6120
email: imc@imcal.com.au

Dave Kimble

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