What is happening underground in Stawell?
Located approximately 240 km northwest of Melbourne’s CBD, located within the Shire of Northern Grampians local government area, a golden opportunity for both the Stawell community and for the international scientific community has emerged.
Stawell was founded in 1853 as ‘Pleasant Creek’ during the Victorian gold rush, but the significance of the rich underground alluvial gold reserves wasn’t realised until 1858, when over 9,000 prospectors began digging in the ‘Great Western Goldfield’.
Gold mining remained the heart and lifeblood of the Stawell community for many years until yields decreased, with several mines no longer commercially viable.
Australian physicists, however, were exploring a novel idea: finding a decommissioned mining site from which to establish the Southern Hemisphere’s first underground physics laboratory in their search for elusive dark matter.
Find out more about the history and development of the mine:
History.
Stawell, described by locals as the Gateway to the Grampians, is in central western Victoria, about 240 km northwest of Melbourne. Stawell arose as a gold mining locality, originally known as Pleasant Creek, in the 1850s, until many of the mines closed in around 1918, which was a blow to the town’s prosperity.
Gold mining continued on, for several more decades, until it became commercially unviable.
A proposal by the Centre of Excellence for Particle Physics was made in 2014 to set up a dark matter research facility in Stawell using disused sections of Stawell Gold Mine's underground tunnels, and the development of the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory began.
Progress.
First proposed in 2014, the first phase for the development of the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory was provided $1.75 million funding in the 2015 Australian federal budget, matched by an equal grant from the Victorian state government.
Construction started 2016 and was expected to be complete in 2017, however, the development was delayed by a series of corporate mergers in 2015 and 2016, with the new owners dismissing most of the labour force and shutting down the Stawell gold mine to a "care and maintenance" state in December 2016.
In December 2017, the site was purchased by a new owner who announced their intention to reopen the mine and their support of the underground laboratory, and in 2019, the project resumed.
The 2019 Australian federal budget provided $5 million for the development of SUPL, with a memorandum of understanding signed in July 2019 between Stawell Gold Mines Pty Ltd, the Northern Grampians Shire Council, and the University of Melbourne, for the building and operation of the laboratory.
Further delays were experienced during the global pandemic of COVID-19, however, the development of the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory was finally completed in August 2022!
Find out how the Stawell Underground Physics Laboratory is part of a nation-wide effort to sustainably rehabilitate previously mined, abandoned, derelict or neglected sites.
Caring for our environment.
