Introduction

It is a great honour to be invited by the Council of the University of Adelaide to deliver the 1948 Joseph Fisher Lecture on “The Importance of the Steel Industry to Australia.” It is a subject which is all-absorbing and is especially interesting to South Australia, the State which supplies the Australian steel industry and allied works with two of their major raw materials, iron ore and limestone, and some of their lesser known requirements, dolomite, salt and gypsum. Mr. I. McLennan has largely assisted in the collecting of data and facts for this lecture.

Early history

The early history of the industry is interesting. Iron Smelting was first established in 1848, just one hundred years ago, in the vicinity of Mittagong (then called Nattai) in New South Wales. This was a small enterprise and despite several attempts achieved little success. It was finally abandoned in 1886. In 1874, Mr. James Rutherford in association with other well known colonists set about establishing a blast furnace at Lithgow, New South Wales, and in 1875 the Eskbank Iron Works commenced operations. Mr. William Sandford was the lessee of the Mittagong Works in the 1880's and when in 1886 he abandoned them he took over the Works at Lithgow. Under his direction the plant was extended and on January 15, 1894, the first sheet rolling mill in this country was started. On the 24th April, 1900, an important milestone in the history of the industry was passed when the first heat of open hearth steel made in Australia was tapped from a newly erected 4-ton furnace at the Lithgow Works.