Relocated State Battery - Meekatharra, Western Australia
S 26° 35.701 E 118° 29.632
50J E 648751 N 7057550
A Relocated State Battery in the former gold rush town of Meekatharra.
Waymark Code: WMER37
Location: Western Australia, Australia
Date Posted: 06/30/2012
Views: 2
This five stamp gold battery was relocated to the Tourist Information Bay in the centre of Meekatharra in the Centenary Year 1994.
The inscription on the plaque reads:
- MEEKATHARRA BATTERY -
This Battery operated at Meekatharra from 1901 until 1987.
During that time it produced 208,219 ounces of gold from 290,927 tons of ore.
Like many others throughout Western Australia the Battery was established and run
by the State Government. The State Batteries gave prospectors and individual
miners the opportunity to have their hard-won ore crushed, treated and the
gold extracted.
In the Centenary Year of 1994, the Meekatharra State Battery was relocated to this site
in acknowledgement of the efforts of the early prospectors and miners and those who
followed them.
Without the Battery the prospectors and miners could not have stayed and without the
prospectors and miners Meekatharra may not have survived.
The first settlement at Meekatharra occurred in 1894 and in May 1896, after the prospectors Meehan, Porter and Soich discovered gold, miners moved to the new settlement from the other East Murchison fields and mining grew rapidly in scale and sophistication.
Success on the Meekatharra field was short-lived. It was only because a second gold discovery occurred in 1899 that the town survived. In 1901 the Meekatharra State Battery began operation and by Christmas Day 1903 the township had been officially gazetted.
Meekatharra exists now as a major supply centre for the pastoral and mining area in the Murchison region of Western Australia. It is located 764 km north-east of Perth on the Great Northern Highway. It is a centre for sheep and cattle transshipment, initially by rail but now by road trains. It is also a regional home to the Royal Flying Doctor Service and the School of the Air. No viable horticultural industry exists in the area, although extensive but poor sheep and cattle stations exist in the Murchison and Gascoyne Regions.