The Bougainville Copper Project

Yours truly on Loloho Beach

 

The Bougainville Copper Project in the then Territory of Papua & New Guinea ran from 1966 to 1973 and cost some $350 million. At its peak in mid-1971, it employed a labour force of some 10,700.

The Bougainville Copper Project was not only the largest grass roots copper project undertaking in the world to that date, it was also a monument to every man who turned his hand towards its completion.

 

The building of the giant Panguna open-cut copper mine by Conzinc Riotinto Australia (CRA) on the island of Bougainville brought profound change to local landowners. Issues that would eventually cripple the mine, at the time the largest of its kind in the world, are evident from its beginning in 1970. Despite royalties, training programs and extensive development, landowner concerns, such as pollution of the rivers by the tailings from the mine and a belief that the mining land would never be restored to its natural state, eventually escalated into conflict, which resulted in the closure of the mine. These issues are clearly seen in this film, made shortly after the mine was opened.

 

My own time there from 1970 until 1972 and again from 1973 to 1974, plus a month-long "working holiday" over Christmas 1980, was both career- and life-changing, and I shared this experience with many others to whose memory I dedicated the Bougainville Copper Project website.

 

Those who came later for permanent jobs in the mine were shown cute little induction videos such as this one to show them what they were heading for.

 

When I started it in 2003 with very little web design skills and and even fewer hopes that anyone would be interested in reading about the Bougainville Copper Project, I was surprised by the responses it drew from so many people. To date it has attracted some 100,000 visitors.

 

Also available for public viewing at periscopefilm.com

 

Given the current age of those who worked on the Bougainville Copper Project fifty years ago, it is perhaps not surprising that both its blog and the website are dying a slow death as their readership is diminishing.

 

 

To all those who sent in their reminiscences and entertaining comments - click here and here - a big "thank you", and please keep coming back to these pages any time you feel a bout of "Bougainvilleitis" coming on.

Oh, and by the way, do you remember the rumours about the stuff they were said to put in our tea in the camp, to keep our minds of IT ... ?

Well, more than fifty years later, I think mine's beginning to kick in.

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