This must surely be so out of date as to be useless. It doesn't surprise me that it ignored much that was important in the first place. ( )

This must surely be so out of date as to be useless. It doesn't surprise me that it ignored much that was important in the first place. ( )

This must surely be so out of date as to be useless. It doesn't surprise me that it ignored much that was important in the first place. ( )

The history of mining is central to Australian history, from the gold rushes of the 1860's which brought hundreds of thousand of immigrants, to the mountain ranges of iron ore and immense natural gas fields which insulate the country from world economic downturns. Blainey's history starts at the beginning and works it way forward discussing the economics and the technology of mining and mines decade after decade. His attention to mineral processing is refreshing, given that the extraction of metals from ore was a chemical problem that had to be solved again and again in differently constituted ore bodies. As Blainey hammers home, mining was not so much a matter of digging wealth out of the ground, but rather a matter of applying immense skill and experience in locating the best yielding ores and then extracting the maximum return from them. The catalog of mine failures - and revivals - emphasized how much the success of a mining enterprise hinged upon the availability of capital and constant effort in improving the methods for extraction and processing of the minerals.

The focus throughout the book is on metal ores, with only a passing mention of oil and gas, and no discussion at all about coal, except insofar as its availability influenced the location of metal ore processing sites. And it might be added that while there is some frank discussion of workers industrial and social issues, that story ends more or less in the late 1960's and doesn't address issues of Aboriginal land rights and concerns about the environment that were only just coming to attention in the 1970's in Australia. Some recently added chapters bring the history of mines up to the 1990's, but there is a sense that there was a lot more that could be said about this period beyond a mere cataloging of discoveries and the exploitation of finds. There was a second books worth of material in this post 1960's period, but you won't find any more than a hint of it here.

But with those limitations this is an excellent history, well worth while from the perspective of mining, or as a general history of Australia. Blainey writes well, and covers the social aspects with considerably insight, and the scientific aspects (of mineral processing particularly) in a way that suggests both the importance and (even) the excitement of developing and applying new methods of mineral processing. You might even imagine that this book could inspire young people to take up a career in mining. Which points to the reason that I don't rate this book as highly as I might. There is a just as sense that it is at times too much a panegyric to the mining industry. I think it's really just a case of Blainey's enthusiasm for his task making it seem that there's more to be said about the dark side of Australian mining history, but all histories come from some perspective and that doesn't lessen the worth of what Blainey has achieved here. The proper answer is to seek out other author's viewpoints, and this book does a good job of firing that interest. Highly recommended. ( )