Early Workings:
Mr. Smith worked the mine for the next two years and (Sir) Douglas Mawson, an outstanding geologist and explorer, named the mineral “Davidite”, which contained radium, uranium,
plus ilmenite, rutile, magnetite, hematite, pyrite, chalcopyrite intergrown with quartz and biotite, together with minor amounts of chromium, vanadium, and molybdenum.
The claim lapsed in 1908 but was then taken up by the Radium Hill Company when more shafts were sunk and a total of 350 milligrams of radium were prepared, together with 150 kg. of uranium.
Radium Keith Lively was born at the Mine in 1913. The miners and their families lived in tents and humpies on the banks of Olary Creek. Mining ceased in 1914 at the outbreak of World War I.
In 1923 the Radium and Rare Earth Treatment Company N.L. restarted mining operations, which ceased in 1931. Radium Lively’s elder brother Harry was a miner who suffered the only serious accident during this time when while “bogging out”, his shovel struck a detonator which exploded and caused the shovel to take off his left heel.
Read On about the Mining