Sunny Corner operated from the 1850s through to the 1920s. At its peak, the mine was the largest silver mine in Australia.

Sunny Silver Pty Ltd is a wholly owned subsidiary of Ecteoch Resources. ML1617 - which encompasses the historical, legacy Sunny Corner Mine, abandoned in the early 1900s - is owned by Sunny Silver. The Sunny Corner ML1617 Project is located halfway between Lithgow and Bathurst in NSW, around 2 hours drive west of Sydney.

Sunny Corner is a former mining town, which had a population of around 4,000 people at the time when mining was active. Now, the population has declined to less than 100 in the last census. The township is not the main focus of Sunshine Reclamation’s efforts.  The mine itself is located approximately one kilometre to the north of the town.

Sunny Corner Legacy

The Sunny Corner mine has left a permanent legacy of pollution and contaminated water and soils.  To this day it continues to ooze acid and heavy metals into our environment and ultimately onto our plates.  The area of the mine was stripped bare of natural vegetation more than a century ago and now colonizing pine trees have spread through the area killing biodiversity and choking out the natives and massively increasing the fire danger to the local community. A report by the Australia Institute submitted to a Federal Senate Inquiry into legacy mines in Australia in 2018 listed Sunny Corner in the top 10 most hazardous leagacy mines in NSW that sit on Crown Land.

The plan

Sunshine Reclamation plans to reclaim and rehabilitate the minesite area.  First, it is targeting the slag heaps (which contain up to 35 times the level of arsenic in national guidelines).  The slag heaps will be taken away from the site and processed in a modern processing plant to produce metals and a stable heavy metal by-product for long-term storage.

The area will then be recontoured and planted where possible. Next the piles of mullock will be removed, processed and then the area planted.

Ultimately, the aim is to remove the sources of the pollution and construct a new landscape and ecosystem similar to the pre-European environment. This will stop the pollution and provide a safe area for the community and animals.

Sunny Corner History

Few people realize that a major silver mine operated at Sunny Corner from the 1850s through to the 1920s.  At its peak, the mine was the largest silver mine in Australia, employed 700 people and generated enormous wealth for the people of NSW.  The operation was also at the technological forefront of ore processing at this time.

Processing the ore

There were several companies working at Sunny Corner and processing the ore.  Some used the latest smelting technology while others used technology that was hundreds of years old.  The main issue was that the ore was complex and the silver was enclosed in minerals called sulphides.  Without burning off the sulphur in the minerals, the silver could not be recovered.

Open roasting was used by some companies.  This involved stacking the ore in piles on wood and burning them before recovering the silver using gravity methods such as stamper mills or panning.  As it burned, the sulphur would turn into acid and carry lead and arsenic fumes into the environment and into the lungs of the workers.  Many people became sick or died as a consequence.

Some of the other companies installed furnaces which heated up the ore and allowed the silver to drain to the bottom and be recovered.  They used coal, sand and limestone in the furnaces. 

Slag

There are still other legacies of the smelters and mining that remain today.  A by-product of the smelters was the slag poured off the smelting pots.  This slag contained the metals that did not go up the smelter chimneys.  The metal laden slag remains today – much as it was 100 years ago. 

The slag was stacked in huge piles right next to the smelters and even today nothing grows on it.  When acid from the old mines contacts the slag, it dissolves and releases the metals into the environment.  These metals go into the waterways from which the cattle and sheep and crops we eat source their life giving water.  As they drink, the metals go into their systems and eventually end up on our plates.  Some communities further down the river draw their drinking water from the same waterways.