Queensland's last uranium mining town, Mary Kathleen, vanished into the outback as it was stripped bare and sold

In a dark, dry shed in the middle of outback Queensland, Gail Wipaki is opening a door to the past.

Inside are the hundreds of photos, papers and objects she's collected over 30 years, from a town that used to exist an hour's drive away. 

They are all that remains of Mary Kathleen, a uranium mining community which was shuttered and sold for parts in 1982.

Before: Mary Kathleen uranium mining town in the 1950s.. . After: The entire town was stripped bare and sold off after the mine's closure in 1982. . .

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"It was what they called Australia's largest auction, and everything was auctioned off: the houses, everything that was in the houses, the mine, the mining machinery," Ms Wipaki, who now works at a local museum exhibiting the remains of Mary Kathleen, said.

It's been more than 40 years since uranium was last mined from this remote, mineral-rich part of outback Queensland — a time of Stubbies shorts, Malcolm Fraser and regulations that permitted the mining and exportation of yellow cake ore from Queensland to the world.

But local memories are long and following the federal Opposition's proposal to build seven nuclear reactors across Australia, the ghosts of Mary Kathleen, Queensland's last uranium mine, are stirring.

Frenzied prospecting

The uranium frenzy of the early 1950s — driven by the Cold War and a burgeoning nuclear power industry — arrived in outback western Queensland in 1954. 

Norm McConachy, Clem Walton and Mr Walton's sons joined other amateur prospectors who had flocked to the Selwyn Ranges with the hope of finding their fortunes.

While repairing their broken-down truck in a dry creek bed during a day of prospecting, Mr McConachy turned on his Geiger counter, and it responded "after the fashion in which a mob of teenagers react to a pop idol", according to a memoir from the late 1960s.

Two leases were pegged in the area — called Mary Kathleen, after Mr McConachy's late wife — with a small mining company called Rio Tinto taking on a majority stake and developing the mine to production. It was the start of the mining behemoth's Australian business ventures.

It was a sign of the times in the mining region, with a journalist from The Age calling Mary Kathleen the "femme fatale who has come to live next door … upsetting the balance of the Mount Isa family".

In October 1958, then prime minister Robert Menzies opened the Mary Kathleen township, six kilometres from the open-cut uranium mine it serviced.

Ms Wipaki grew up in the nearby town of Cloncurry and often travelled to Mary Kathleen for shopping, sport and to visit family working at the mine. 

She remembers its heyday as an oasis in the dry scrub, with uniform white houses for families, separate quarters for single men, cinemas and pools.

"I never went to the mine. It was the town and the people."

Life at an outback uranium mine

But life was not always easy in the mining village.

Two years spent living and working at 'Mary K' as a mine geologist has turned into a lifelong fascination for Andrew Cuthbertson, who wrote a memoir, Mary Kathleen Reflections: A Loss of Innocence Working at a Uranium Mine in the Australian Outback.

Mr Cuthbertson said the community of nearly 1,000 people was "wholesome," but one where "everyone knew everyone else's business", and where the few single women "attracted the undivided attention of the large number of lonesome male workers".

"The social history gets lost … and that epitomises the issue of Mary Kathleen. All that is seen are the remnants and you are left to speculate."

The town went into hibernation for the first time in 1963, with a glut of uranium on the market and the mine's only supply contract with the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority completed. 

Another 10 years passed before new contracts were drawn up with energy companies in Japan, the United States and Germany, with sustained the mine for another eight years.

But by 1982, Mary Kathleen Uranium Mine's ore deposit was exhausted. Public sentiment on uranium mining had shifted, and the Queensland government banned uranium mining in 1989.

The mine became the test case for Australia's first uranium mine rehabilitation, and Ms Wipaki said everything in the town was put under the hammer, right down to the lamp posts.

"You could buy a Mary K house for about two grand, but then you had to shift it. That was a big cost," she said.

"All mining does come to an end eventually."

Uranium 'a big opportunity'

Four decades later, Katter Australia Party's state member for Traeger, Robbie Katter, represents an area of north-west Queensland that holds approximately 2 per cent of global uranium resources in reserve, according to Geosciences Australia.

While the estimated costs and production details of the Coalition's plan to generate nuclear power are yet to be revealed, Mr Katter said he would like to see the national conversation about nuclear energy include the possibility of domestic uranium supply.

Australia's two current uranium mines are located in South Australia, following the closure of the Ranger Uranium Mine in the Northern Territory in 2021. 

Mr Katter said Australia's uranium ore reserves were an economic opportunity, which mining communities had not forgotten.

"The third biggest uranium deposits [in Australia] exist outside of Mount Isa," he said.

"[It] could complement the mining activity, diversify the mineral wealth that's generated in the area. So that's a really big opportunity for us."