page_title: Lal Lal Iron Mine and Smelting Works
section_title: Remnants and legacy
hierarchical_section_title: Lal Lal Iron Mine and Smelting Works / Remnants and legacy
caption_attribution_description: Українська: Доменна піч колишньої компанії Lal Lal Iron Company біля селища Лал-Лал, штат Вікторія, Австралія. Була побудована 1880 року і працювала до 1884 року. English: The former Lal Lal Iron Company blast furnace near Lal Lal, Victoria, Australia, was built in 1880 and produced pig iron until the company went out of business in 1884.
context_page_description: Lal Lal Iron Mine and Smelting Works were located close to the western branch of the Moorabool River, near the town of Lal Lal, Victoria, Australia, which lies on the Geelong-Ballarat railway line about 19 km from Ballarat. From 1875 to 1884, pig iron was made there in a blast furnace using iron ore mined at the site, locally produced charcoal, and limestone from a nearby deposit. The works ultimately proved to be uneconomic. It remains the only attempt to establish an iron smelting industry in Victoria.
  The ruin of the blast furnace on the site is one of only three extant 19th-century blast furnace structures in Australia—the other ones being in northern Tasmania and southern New South Wales—and it is the only one of its type in the southern hemisphere. The site is on the Victorian Heritage Register and the Register of the National Estate.
context_section_description: The site of the mine and blast furnace operation is now a public reserve known as the Lal Lal-Bungal Historic Area, which is also the site of the Bungal Dam on the Western Moorabool River.
  The main remnant at the site is the ruin of the blast furnace built in 1880 and last used in 1884. The ruin consists of the square base of the furnace and the circular and tapering inner part of upper furnace structure. Originally, as shown by a photograph taken in 1882, the upper part also included an outer casing made of stone, which was square in horozontal section and tapered evenly with increasing height. That outer casing is now missing.
  Near the furnace ruin, foundations and mountings for the furnace machinery are also present. There is also a rare 'Cornish flue', essentially a chimney made of stone that was built at ground level but which rises with the natural incline of the terrain.  It probably had the function of removing smoke and noxious gases from the immediate area around the blast furnace.
  Below the furnace ruin, downhill toward the river, there is a large dump of slag produced during iron-making operations. Other remnants are the bed of the tramway (in places), clearings where charcoal was burned, and the areas mined for iron ore.
  The economics of making iron in colonial Australia ultimately defeated the Lal Lal blast furnace operation, as it did its contemporaries—the Fitzroy Iron Works, the Tamar Hematite Iron Company, and the earliest blast furnace operations of the Eskbank Ironworks. Eventually, greater capitalisation, greater volumes, and finally protection from import competition during the years after Federation saw the growth of a viable Australian iron and steel industry.
caption: Remains of the blast furnace built in 1880 and in use from 1881 to 1884. (Taken in February 2014)
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