The rise and fall of Poseidon NL.
The people.
The shares.
The company.
The story.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Poseidon NL created one of the biggest mining booms ever witnessed by the Australian Stock Exchange, and it all started in Adelaide, South Australia in September 1969.
"It is fitting, and somehow typically Australian, that Poseidon, the glamour galloper of the nickel field, takes its name from a racehorse that won the Melbourne Cup."*
Today it is possible to stand in the area where Ken Shirley stood in April 1969 and decided to test for the presence of nickel. Ken discovered gossan (weathered surface rocks of underlying mineralisation), in which the first indication of nickel was noticed.
Occurring as it did at a time when nickel was in short supply, the discovery triggered a rush for shares in Poseidon that reverberated through the stock market of the world. Fortunes were made and lost in all parts of the globe as the shares went from $0.80 to $280.00 in five months and then down to $39.00 ten months later and, by 1976, to $0.38.
If Shirley had missed this location, the ore body would have stayed where it was until someone else found it. This might have been at a point in time when nickel was plentiful, or when another material had superseded it. One can only speculate.
He did find it however in April 1969 and the rest, as they say, is history.
This book, The Poseidon Boom, provides a comprehensive and honest recount of the people. The shares. The company. The story.
*The Advertiser, S.A, Adelaide, Tue Dec 16th, 1969, p 2, by John Miles
All the information in the Poseidon Boom is historically accurate as it was written at the time. This is except for minor word changes, as the context of the word has itself changed.
All possible effort has been taken to provide the best quality copies of ephemera newspaper and magazine articles and photos for this book. Due to the age and condition of some of these, 100% clear viewing is difficult.