Brothers Donald and Tim Moore lived through the country’s first nickel boom in Western Australia’s resources-rich Goldfields.
The metal’s discovery near Kambalda in the 1960s sparked a modern-day renaissance for the historic mining region built on its 1890s gold rush.
It set the brothers on different paths that were heavily influenced by the “magic metal” of the day.
Donald, 60, worked extensively in gold mining and spent 13 years at the Kalgoorlie Nickel Smelter, while his 59-year-old brother Tim has documented the region’s ups and downs as a historian with the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder.
Another chapter in that history was written this week with production at the smelter ending after more than half a century of continuous production since 1973.
The Kalgoorlie Nickel Smelter has been operating for more than 50 years. (ABC Goldfields: Jarrod Lucas)
‘Nickel was king’
When the Moore family moved to Coolgardie in 1977, depressed gold prices had reduced Kalgoorlie’s famous Golden Mile to a single operation — the Mount Charlotte underground mine.
As Tim Moore puts it, “nickel was king”.
“Gold was in the doldrums and nickel was what kept this place going,” he said.
Donald Moore (left) worked at the smelter for more than a decade while Tim is a local historian. (ABC Goldfields: Jarrod Lucas)
The brothers’ first memories of the nickel smelter are driving from nearby Coolgardie into Kalgoorlie-Boulder, where they recall seeing a thick yellow plume of sulphur dioxide sitting above the outback city.
“You could see it on the drive in,” Donald Moore said.
“If you were asthmatic you just didn’t go outside on bad days … it was so thick you could taste it.”
Historian Tim Moore delved into the archives to find the front page of the Kalgoorlie Miner newspaper from 1973 when the smelter was officially opened. (ABC Goldfields: Jarrod Lucas)
Air monitoring stations have been in place around Kalgoorlie-Boulder since the 1980s.
Conditions improved significantly after 1996, when a sulphuric acid plant was installed to remove the majority of sulphur dioxide from the gas stream prior to discharge.
Donald Moore later worked on the acid plant.
“No one really complained about it [air quality] in those days because the smelter brought jobs to the region,” Tim Moore said.
The Kalgoorlie Nickel Smelter cost $30 million and took two years to build. (Supplied: State Library of WA)
Smelter cost $30m
According to the census of 1966 — the same year nickel was discovered in nearby Kambalda — the combined population of the Town of Kalgoorlie and the Shire of Boulder was 15,837 people.
By the time of the 1976 census, the population had grown to 18,305 in an era when fly-in, fly-out work practices did not exist.
“We’ve had a two-speed economy ever since — either gold is up and nickel is down or vice versa,” Tim Moore said.
“It has worked in a boom and bust cycle, and shutting down nickel means we’re at the mercy of gold prices.”
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Nickel’s traditional use has been in stainless steel, with the Vietnam War playing a significant part in driving demand for the metal.
In recent years, the demand has been driven by the growth of electric vehicles and consumer electronics, with nickel a key component in modern batteries.
The Kalgoorlie smelter was viewed as a jewel in the crown of WA’s nickel industry, costing $30 million and taking two years to build.
“It is a splendid thing that the great mining skills built up over generations in this area should be preserved and used in the area itself,” Prime Minister Gough Whitlam remarked at its official opening on April 7, 1973.
“I congratulate Kalgoorlie on a great new chapter unfolding in its history.”
Prime Minister Gough Whitlam at the Kalgoorlie Nickel Smelter’s official opening in 1973. (Supplied: BHP)
Industry’s future in doubt
Donald Moore recalled the heat from the smelter’s flash furnace — with temperatures above 1,400 degrees Celsius — was so intense it would keep the fog away on freezing winter mornings.
He also shared how some former colleagues cooked a raw chicken in “three seconds flat” by turning the furnace into a makeshift oven.
The current state of WA’s nickel industry is how one would imagine that chicken tasted after it came out of the furnace, with thousands of job losses and mine closures this year.
Inside the control room during the early days at the Kalgoorlie Nickel Smelter. (Supplied: BHP)
The WA mines shuttered so far include Ravensthorpe, Cosmos, Savannah, Kambalda North, Cassini, Forrestania, Mount Keith, and Leinster.
Just two have survived — Murrin Murrin and Nova — with the value of Australia’s nickel exports expected to more than halve to $1.4 billion this financial year.
The Office of the Chief Economist forecasts it will fall to about $500 million in 2025-26.
The question now is whether the closure of BHP’s Nickel West is the death knell for the WA nickel sector.
Donald Moore, who spent 13 years working at the Kalgoorlie Nickel Smelter, says it is the end of an era. (ABC Goldfields: Jarrod Lucas)
Of 380 workers at the Kalgoorlie smelter, only 30 will stay on during care and maintenance, and BHP does not plan to review its nickel business until early 2027.
“I know some people who have been there all their lives,” Donald Moore said.
“There is a whole generation now that is either seeking new jobs or they will have to relocate.
“Hopefully it will restart but I’m not getting my hopes up. Nothing like that is ever simple turning it back on.”