The Second Rush
Mining and the Transformation of Australia
David Lee
Hardback, 426 pages, $49.95
ISBN: 9781925501148
The Second Rush is a history of the minerals boom in Australia over the
half-century from the early 1960s to the end of the China minerals boom
in 2012. The earlier substantial mining boom—the gold rush of the
nineteenth century—created extraordinary prosperity. However, from 1901
to the 1950s, with a few exceptions, mining descended into the doldrums.
In the 1940s mining was regarded as belonging to Australia’s past and
not to its future.
The “Second Rush” began unexpectedly from the 1960s with the development
of new export industries, the most prominent being coal, iron ore and
bauxite. The mining boom turned Australia’s chronic balance of payments
around; substantially influenced Australia’s turn to Asia; and
underpinned the era of optimism and nationalism of the late 1960s and
1970s. The Second Rush continued through the “resources boom” of the
late 1970s and 1980s. At the turn of the new century, few saw any great
future for mining after the harder times of the 1980s and 1990s, but
then Australia embarked on its greatest boom—the China resources boom
from 2002 to 2012.
The Second Rush traces the progress of Australia’s
second minerals rush over half a century, examining explorers,
financiers, managers and engineers, mining companies and their
relationship with governments, workers and industrial relations and the
impact of mining on the environment and on Australia’s first peoples.
David Lee is a historian of twentieth century Australian history and
foreign policy. His publications include
Australia and the World in the
Twentieth Century, Melbourne, 2005 and
Stanley Melbourne Bruce
Australian Internationalist, London and New York, 2010. Since 2012 he
has researched the modern history of mining in Australia
[ITEMPRICE]