Lives in Cricket No 38 - Lionel Robinson

18 potentially lucrative opportunities were successfully pinpointed by the Group; this resulted in him becoming even more closely associated with some of the other major investors currently active in Australia. One of the major problems concerned the handling of over six million tonnes of sand and slime residue dumps and how best to extract the 12 million dollars of metal, mostly zinc, contained in surface deposits, locally referred to as ‘skimp’ dumps. The successful solution to this particular problem led to Lionel being one of the founders of the Zinc Corporation Ltd. (ZC) in Melbourne in 1905. A concentrating mill established by ZC was employed to treat material brought in from other mines and the company flourished, soon expanding to diversify into underground operations, cutting back on its treatment of surface residues. In time ZC would be renamed Rio Tinto Zinc, but there were stormy times ahead for that young company in particular and the Anglo-Australian Group in general. Due to a collapse in the share boom at Broken Hill triggered by a stock market panic in New York leading to a sharp fall in the price of base metals, Govett and Hoover, the joint managers of ZC, found the going uncomfortable and the latter became ‘very wild’ about the share dealings of Lionel and W.L.Baillieu who, he complained, were ‘merely market people’. In the long run, however, only those two possessed sufficient capital to rescue the Group and return it to a sound footing. Unsurprisingly, the Baillieu and Robinson families became inextricably linked both financially and socially and the partnership was formalised when Lionel’s niece Margaret married W.L.’s son Harry in 1922. 19 19 Bill Clark’s daughter, Ruby, had already married WL Baillieu’s eldest son, Clive, who later became the 1st Baron Baillieu. The early life of Lionel Robinson Broken Hill, 1908, the centre of a major financial involvement by Lionel and his associates. (State Records NSW)