John Sutherland
SUTHERLAND, John Waters ABalSM, MAmerIME, MAusIMM (c.1870-1946) [1]
John Waters Sutherland was born at Scotchman's Lead, near Ballarat in Victoria, on 16 August 1870. His father was John Sutherland, a miner, and his mother was Wilhelmina Waters, both of Scotland. Sutherland was a graduate of the Ballarat School of Mines, where as a young man he experimented with X rays. In 1889 he became assayer and chemist at a mine in Broken Hill and in 1893 the mine’s assistant metallurgist.
Sutherland came to Western Australia and was appointed metallurgist at Lake View Consols Ltd (ECGF Boulder) under H C Callahan in 1896. Shortly afterwards he was involved in the introduction of filter presses in the cyaniding of slimes. They were first used to treat Kalgoorlie ores in Hamburg in 1896 when a German Deyne filter press (from the sugar beet industry) was used in the treatment of ore from Hannan’s Brownhill GMg Co Ltd (ECGF Boulder). When the managers of Hannan’s Brownhill, Bewick Moreing & Co., wished to repeat the trials at the mine it ordered a similar press to Deyne’s from S H Johnson & Co., the British manufacturer of filter presses for the sewage treatment industry. This was set up during the reconstruction of Brownhill’s first oxidised ore mill in early 1897 and was claimed to be the first operational filter press in Kalgoorlie.
Meanwhile in January 1897 Sutherland and Peter McIntyre, manager of Australian Gold Recovery Co. (AGRC), the holders of the MacArthur Forrest cyanide process patents, were reported to be working together on the development of the Lake View Consols cyanide plant, it then being the usual policy of AGRC to assist in the development of new cyanide plants. At the end of February 1897 it was announced that filter presses were to be used on slimes and that one had been ordered. In August the prototype Dehne filter press was set up and in the following month Richard Hamilton of Great Boulder advised a colleague that it was working ‘like a charm’.
During 1897 Sutherland was also examining possible ways of making the cyanide process more effective on the mine’s sulpho telluride ore and in particular by roasting the ore to obtain products from which gold could be extracted more easily. Accordingly in that year he set up a small Victorian reverberatory furnace which was the first on the Golden Mile specifically designed as a pilot plant for roasting sulphides. The results of the roasting tests were sufficiently favourable for Callahan to recommend the construction of a sulphide plant based on dry crushing and roasting which was built in 1899.
However, in August of 1899 Sutherland was appointed manager of Golden Horse shoe Estates Co. Ltd (ECGF Boulder). In 1897 Charles Kaufman, the controversial financier, had gained control of the previous company, Golden Horse Shoe GMg Co, and in 1899 the new company took over. In addition to Sutherland, George Klug was recruited as the company’s metallurgist. The most important policy to be decided was how to process the two grades of sulphide ore being opened up. Initially the plan was to send high grade ore and concentrates to smelters and to roast ordinary sulphide ore. The company abandoned the idea of roasting ordinary sulphide ore and Kaufman formed a new company, Fremantle Smelting Works Ltd in March 1900, to operate a smelter at Fremantle which would smelt standard sulphide ore and concentrates. A small smelter would be built at the mine to smelt the high grade sulpho telluride ore. The small three stage smelter, designed by Sutherland and Klug, commenced operation at the mine in 1901. It was the most advanced processing plant yet built on the Golden Mile and consisted of a water jacketed blast furnace producing bullion which was refined by two cupellation furnaces which were followed by a Miller’s chlorination plant to remove the silver. In the first two years over 50 thousand bullion oz were produced at average grades of 237 dwt per ton (1901) and 320 dwt per ton (1902). During 1903 the amount of high grade ore began to diminish and when the mine’s sulphide plant was opened the small smelter was closed.
Sutherland was appointed general manager of the Fremantle Smelting Works which took over an existing smelter. Sutherland supervised its start up in August 1900 and its early operation but by mid 1901 Klug had taken over from Sutherland who returned to the mine. Klug remained in charge until July 1902 when the company went into liquidation. Its failure was probably due to technical problems rather than any shortage of customers.
Another smelting company, Fremantle Smelter Ltd, also associated with Kaufman, was formed in February 1903. Klug was made general manager and a completely new smelter to his design was built at South Fremantle and commenced operation in November 1903. However, in the 13 months from July 1902 to November 1903, when no smelting was done at Fremantle, all the major Kalgoorlie mines including the Golden Horse shoe had opened sulphide ore treatment plants or had found alternative methods of treatment so the use of the Fremantle works was changed to the smelting of copper and lead ores. Because the Golden Horse shoe had sent its ordinary sulphide ore to Fremantle for smelting (both mine and smelter having common directors) the company delayed building a plant to process all its sulphide ore until 1901 when Sutherland built No. 1 sulphide Mill by converting the oxidised ore mill (with a 50 head battery). Instead of using one of the two proven methods of treating sulpho telluride ore, the ‘dry crush and roast’ process or the Diehl process which utilised bromocyanide as well as cyanide, the Golden Horse shoe (like its neighbour Ivanhoe Gold Corporation) adopted a third method by using an extension of the traditional wet stamp mill practice until the amount of gold left in the tailings became unacceptably high, when bromo cyanide treatment of the slimes would be added as long as provision of the bromo cyanide cost less than the value of the gold saved. No.1 Mill was opened in April 1902 followed later in the year by the first half of No.2 Mill (with a 100 head battery). In 1903 the mine became the biggest gold producer in the state (195 thousand fine oz). Due to its use of the smelter the mine had a high extraction rate but at a high cost. The new policy of the mine was to lower costs by increased throughput, a dangerous policy if output could not be maintained.
In February 1904, Bewick Moreing & Co., mining consultants and mine managers, signed a most unusual contract with the directors of the Golden Horse shoe. Management of the mine would be transferred to Bewick Moreing if the company was able to reduce the mine’s total costs from 46 shillings a ton to less than 25s per ton by 31 December 1904 – more like a wager than a contract. The neighbouring mine, Ivanhoe G Corp for which Bewick Moreing was consultant, had total costs of 23s 6d per ton so 25s might seem possible but only if the directors and Sutherland were fully cooperative. It soon became apparent that this was not to be. Sutherland sailed for London to ‘confer with the directors’ and, no doubt, to do what he could to sabotage the new arrangements. By September the contract was cancelled and Sutherland returned in triumph to Kalgoorlie.
Bewick Moreing completed the second stage of No.2 Mill but reported that the plant was ‘grossly underpowered’ and recommended the installation of a larger capacity engine which was refused by the board. Bewick Moreing hired the necessary engine which Sutherland later purchased. In 1908 he installed a 500 kW turbo generator and transformer to power the plant, the mine thus becoming the first on the Golden Mile to largely convert to electrical power. At the end of 1909 the Golden Horse shoe had been the largest gold producer in Kalgoorlie for ten years. It had paid ₤3 million in dividends and was raising 25 per cent more ore every year than any other Kalgoorlie mine. However, in January 1910, came the first sign that all was not well with the mine when the monthly gold return fell from 11,320 fine oz in December to 6,551 oz in January 1911 despite there being no decrease in the tonnage raised. This short term fall led to the exposure of what was to become more serious longer term falls in grades and production. This had not been foreseen because Sutherland, over a number of years, had been including in his estimates of reserves ore that had not been ‘blocked out’ on three sides and had given these inflated values which had not been fully corrected for when the ore had been stoped. In one year (1909 1910) gold production fell by 31 per cent from 143 thousand oz to 98 thousand oz. Production never exceeded 105 thousand oz again, averaging 96 thousand per year in 1910 18 and 53 thousand in 1919 25. Sutherland retired in 1928 when the Golden Horse shoe closed, having produced over 2 million fine oz of gold from 4.8 million tons of ore.
Sutherland gave evidence to the Commonwealth enquiry into foreign contract labour in 1901, to the state Select Committee into amendments to the Friendly Societies Act in 1902 and to the Royal Commissions on miners’ lung diseases in 1911 and on the mining industry in 1925. He was a local director of Triton Gold Mine ( MGF Reedys) in 1940, and a director of Yellowdine Gold Development (YGF Mt Palmer) in 1940, and of the Lady Shenton GM (1934) (NCGF Menzies) in 1938. He was elected a member of the American Institute of Mining of Mining Engineers in 1892, and of the Australasian Institute of Mining Engineers in 1909, and was President of the latter institute in 1918. He was a member of the executive committees of the Kalgoorlie Chamber of Mines 1898 1901 and of the Chamber of Mines of Western Australia from 1901. He was Vice President of the latter between 1906 and 1929.
In 1899 (with W. Techow) Sutherland applied for WA Patent 2483 'Improvements in the precipitation of precious metals ... zinc shavings'. He obtained a sealed WA patent for a ‘rotary water sprayer for use in steam cooling towers and the like’ in 1903 and also patented this invention in 4 other Australian states and in Great Britain, the USA and the Transvaal Republic.
John Waters Sutherland never married, and died on 26 September 1946 aged 76. He is buried at Karrakatta Cemetery, Western Australia.
References:
GG 1899, p.1777;
Skinner 1900;
JCA 1902, 1929;
RH.Kalg cps 2.3, 3.3, 4.2, 5.4, 7.4;
Clark pp.32, 51;
RRC Mining industry' V&P WA 1925, 3;
RH.BMC thesis cp 3;
FJA p.168.
WWA 1927, 1935.
MYBA 1940.
ArcAusMM;
Reid pp.238, 279, 282
- ↑ This biography is largely based on the work of Richard Hartley and Denis Cumming
