Mungana is now an insignificant ghost town in North Queensland, but during the 1930s it was the scene of one of the more controversial scandals in Australian Political History. The discovery during the Depression that leading Queensland Labor figures had interests in a company which had sold mining leases to the Queensland government at grossly inflated prices caused a great outcry.
A Royal Commission and legal action followed. The scandal greatly embittered parliamentary political life in Queensland and at the federal level, and wrecked the political career of E.G. Theodore, who was Federal Treasurer at the time, and one of the Labor politicians who benefited from the sale.
This book deals with politics and mining, recording the complex affair, and questions the interpretations of the time.