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Lyell, Mount
Western end of Mount Lyell, with mining areas at right, western Tasmania, Australia.
Mount Lyell
region, Tasmania, Australia
Mount Lyell, mining area, western Tasmania, Australia. The site, discovered in the 1880s, derives its name from a 2,900-ft (880-m) peak in the west coast range, which was named after Charles Lyell, the 19th-century English geologist. First mined for gold and later silver, the area achieved most of its wealth through its copper. After 1968, vast new underground deposits were developed. Most of the workers reside nearby in Queenstown. The copper is usually railed north to the port of Burnie, from which most is shipped to Japan and the remainder sent to Port Kembla, N.S.W. Although the mines closed in 1994, extraction has been revived, with an emphasis on culling copper from the acid drainage and waste dumps of the old sites.
This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.
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