Shared Stories: Realising what you’ve done

Realising what you’ve done

Sulphide Corporation, later Pasminco, selected a site at Cockle Creek in 1895. The plant started operating in 1897.

The site housed lead and zinc smelting and refining, as well as sulphuric acid and fertiliser production.

Lake Macquarie was proud of ‘the Sulphide’. Early photographs show the employees’ festival float stacked with product and a celebration held in a shed containing an enormous pyramid of fertiliser. Industry and employment were nothing but good.

By the 1970s, the corporation’s activities began to look different, to workers and the community. Acid spills caused mass fish deaths in Lake Macquarie. Employee blood testing for heavy metals began in 1972.

In 1991 a community health survey found widespread soil and dust contamination and elevated blood lead levels. Environmental and community health concerns contributed to the plant’s closure in 2003 after 106 years of operation.

Sulphide Corporation aerial site photograph
Sulphide Corporation
Unknown date
Lake Macquarie City Council Local Studies Collection
Unknown donor

This work by Lake Macquarie City Library is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License