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Iron Baron South Australia | |||||||||||||||
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Coordinates | 32°59′54″S 137°09′26″E / 32.9984°S 137.157086°E[1] | ||||||||||||||
Established | 26 April 2013[2][3][1] | ||||||||||||||
Postcode(s) | 5601[1] | ||||||||||||||
Time zone | ACST (UTC+9:30) | ||||||||||||||
• Summer (DST) | ACST (UTC+10:30) | ||||||||||||||
Location | |||||||||||||||
LGA(s) | Pastoral Unincorporated Area[1] | ||||||||||||||
Region | Far North[1] | ||||||||||||||
County | York[1] | ||||||||||||||
State electorate(s) | Giles[4] | ||||||||||||||
Federal division(s) | Grey[5] | ||||||||||||||
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Footnotes | Locations[1] Adjoining localities[1] |
Iron Baron was a settlement associated with the Iron Baron iron ore mine[7] (32°59′48″S 137°09′30″E / 32.99666667°S 137.15833333°E) on Eyre Peninsula at the southern edge of South Australia's Far North region, 413 kilometres (257 miles) north-west of Adelaide.[8]
The settlement was situated about 200 metres from the eastern boundary of the mine. BHP owned and serviced the settlement, having built it about 1938. There were several dozen houses, a one-teacher primary school, a general store, oval, swimming pool, netball courts, picnic areas and licensed community club.[9][10]
Before the mine’s re-opening in 2011, BHP bulldozed all the settlement's surface infrastructure, including buildings, into a pit at the mine. Employees now commute from Whyalla or elsewhere.
The Iron Baron mine is one of several large orebodies in the Middleback Range, with a production capacity of about two million tonnes of haematite a year.[11] Built by BHP in 1933, it went out of operation between 1947 and 1958; it was re-opened in 2011.[12] On-site facilities now include a fully functional ore beneficiation plant.