HEFFERNAN’S WOLFRAM MINE TORRINGTON NSW AUSTRALIA

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0.5 carat facetted beryl

Heffernan’s Mine (Heffernan Brother’s Mine) is one of the classic mineral collecting localities at Torrington. 

It is on private property (Highland Home) north of the Butler Mine/Mystery Face road, as marked on the map, which locates both the mine’s location and the Butler Mine turnoff from the Silent Grove road. 

The map itself is taken from the Torrington (Mole Tableland) map referred to in a previous Blog. As you will see, there are numerous other mines and prospects nearby, both on the private land and in the Conservation Area. Heffernan’s Mine is identified as 0272.

Rasmus (1969) reports on this location as follows:

“ML 52, Parish Highland Home, County Gough. This deposit was proved by shallow shafts and trenches for a distance of about 400 feet. The deepest shaft was about 40 feet. The lode strikes 030° in granite. The lode at the southern end of the deposit consists of decomposed micaceous rock, with vugs containing quartz, feldspar and mica crystal aggregates and occasional prisms of beryl. The wolframite occurs in bunches and is not continuous. At the northern end of the deposit the lode consists of aplite with small amounts of wolframite distributed throughout.”

I have collected there several times and always came back with small, but well-formed quartz crystals, and some pale green beryl.

Specimens are 2-3 cm across

Many people have been here over the years, so if you succeed in getting permission to go into the site, you will have to work for your finds.

Please let us know in the comments section of any previous finds you may have made here and if you succeeded in gaining access to the site.

There is more information in the 1993 Minerama book “Beryl” and in the Gemstones books downloadable from DIGS.  Also worth downloading is the Mineral Industry booklet “Tungsten No. 41, complied by PL Rasmus, April 1969”. The DIGS reference is Industry 41.

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QUARTZ AT “DOWN THE HILL” YARROW CREEK NSW AUSTRALIA

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Any fossicker visiting Yarrow Creek soon notices that at least 90% of the gravel he or she digs up is made of quartz, with the balance usually consisting of granite and odd bits and pieces which are probably xenoliths derived from the local granite. So what, you are probably thinking. Well, the fact is that the size of most of the quartz pieces is considerably greater than the quartz which is a normal constituent of the granite. The sand, so plentiful in the creek is, of course, derived from the granite.

So, where does the quartz gravel come from? The obvious answer is, from veins and/or pegmatite dykes in the granite. However, no granite outcrop that I’ve ever seen there has any veins or dykes in it. So if these quartz veins do exist, they must be in places where there are no outcrops.

“Down the Hill” is one such place. There is an extensive alluvial flat immediately upstream of a rocky area where lots of gravel can be found. 

What makes this gravel different is the presence of lots of chunks of white quartz (up to 1 kg in weight) which is different from the small pieces of quartz seen upstream. It would be reasonable to assume, from its rough appearance, that the quartz hasn’t travelled very far. 

 

Not only that, but there are other pieces of quartz which are distinctly different from the white ones. Each of these is a single, waterworn, smoky crystal; the largest of which I’ve seen weighs just under 5 kg. Most of these are not particularly clear, but certainly worth finding. 

So, apparently, there must be at least two quartz veins or dykes not far upstream from “Down the Hill” which are shedding this material. 

I guess we will never really know.

You will find the NSW Geological Survey booklet “Silica” by DK Griffin (1972) a useful source of information. The DIGS reference is Industry 34.

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PERIDOT FROM GLEN INNES NSW AUSTRALIA

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Peridot is not a gemstone we would normally associate with the Glen Innes district, which is justly famous for its fine sapphires and a host of other gemstones. However, much of the higher country is covered by flows of olivine basalt and from time to time aggregates of olivine crystals can be found in the rock.

The blue metal (basalt) quarries alongside the Gwydir Highway near Glen Innes are quite extensive and some fine peridot gems have been cut from olivine crystals found here. These two stones weigh in at around 1 carat apiece.

On many occasions people have shown me specimens of a yellowish-green mineral they thought was sapphire. Invariably this was found in a creek immediately below a road bridge or crossing and the basalt used in the road construction has been the source of the olivine.

Now that the quarries are owned by the Glen Innes Severn Council, there may be opportunities to search the quarries or at least the rock piles for some of the good material which must be waiting for keen gem hunters to find.

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PRETTY VALLEY GOLD NSW AUSTRALIA

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Pretty Valley near Glen Innes is a place well known for its sapphires, zircons and quartz crystals. It isn’t known for alluvial gold, however, though I’ve always been aware that minute colours of gold could be found by panning.

A few years ago Sue and I were out there with one of our regular Wednesday Baptist Church fossicking trips. As usual, I was digging and sieving the wash and Sue was picking through the concentrates. 

When I returned to the picking table with another pair of sieves for her to go through, she pointed out something unusual she had just found in the bottom sieve. “Is this gold?” was her question. Well, yes, it was – and here it is – the only piece of gold we have ever found at Pretty Valley. It was just big enough not to go through the bottom sieve, and as for weight, less than a gram, I guess. That's an Australian 5 cent coin on the right for size comparison.

I’ve often been asked where gold can be found around Glen Innes. Apart from this small nugget, the only two places where I’ve ever panned were in the Mann River at the Pinkett Road crossing and in the Sara River at Kookabookra. 

There is a useful document you can download from DIGS titled “Gold Mining Around Glen Innes” by JP Belshaw and M Kerr (1950). The report number is GS 2009/0914. A DIGS search using “Glen Innes” as location and “gold” as a keyword will give you other leads (not the deep variety, though some were mined around Shannon Vale near the Mann River.)

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TORRINGTON NSW AUSTRALIA – ESSENTIAL READING

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The Torrington area of NSW is one of the more prolific mineral collecting areas in Australia. Most of the area consists of coarse granite (the Mole Granite) near the centre of which is the Torrington Pendant, part of the original roof of the intrusion, consisting of a series of sedimentary rocks.

There is extensive mineralisation throughout the area, especially near the granite margins and particularly in and around the sedimentary pendant.

Collectors have made the most of the variety and quality of the minerals to be found right from the earliest days of mining in the 1870’s. Today, at any time of the year, you will find people searching the old mine dumps and creek beds for specimens, especially quartz crystals, topaz and beryl.

 DIGS has a vast collection of information on Torrington. (See my blog entry  DOWNLOADING PDF DOCUMENTS FROM DIGS). Simply go to the site and type “Torrington” into the “Locality” box. You can explore 130 years of accumulated knowledge written by the people who were there.

For those needing something in a hurry, here are some documents you can download which I have called “essential reading”.

 

 The Tin Mining Industry and the Distribution of Tin Ores in New South Wales” by JE Carne, 1911. The DIGS  reference is “Mineral Resources 14”. It’s not just about Torrington, of course, but gives lots of good information about the area.

 

A similar book is “The Tungsten Mining Industry in New South Wales”, also by JE Carne, published in 1912. The DIGS reference is “Mineral Resources 15”.

This edition of “Quarterly Notes”, number 17 from October 1974, has an interesting article on the silexite deposits found in and around the Torrington Pendant. Silexite is the quartz-topaz rock found in large masses near the intrusive contacts. The DIGS reference is “QNO 17”.

The Mole Tableland 1:50 000 “Geology and Mineral Occurrences” map is a comprehensive listing of mines and mineral locations which should keep you busy for some time, especially if you go back to DIGS looking for more information on a particular place. The reference is “Map R00041396”.

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DOWNLOADING BOOKS USING “TROVE”

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“Trove” is the National Library of Australia’s archival website. Most often used to study old newspaper files, it has a range of other downloadable categories, including books. 

We’ve seen that DIGS can access a vast number of mining related documents, mainly from New South Wales (see Blog on DIGS dated 4^th June 2013). Not many of these can also be found through Trove, but it is extremely useful for locating titles no longer covered by copyright.

Books can be accessed from sources all around the world. You will soon find that it’s harder to use than DIGS. For a start, there are no catalogue numbers that I can list for you; you will have to locate the books yourself. You will also find that books from some sources are harder to download than others. In fact, I still haven’t figured some sources out. More annoying still are those that you think you can download until you find that you must first be a member of a certain library group, have a password or that you can only get a text-only copy, minus illustrations etc.

Nevertheless, it’s a valuable resource and I’ve gathered quite a collection of useful books. Here’s how to get started.

First bring up the home page: http://trove.nla.gov.au/. You should bookmark this immediately. Click on “Books”. Now tick the “Available online” and “Australian content” boxes, though obviously the latter won’t always be needed. It will cut out a lot of extraneous material, however.

We will locate a book that was in the Parramatta High School library when I was a student there in the 1950’s. It was the book that really piqued my interest in Geology. The full title is “The Geology of Sydney and the Blue Mountains” by Rev J Milne Curran.

Now return to the web page. In the “Search” box put in what you consider are the key words. Try “Geology”, “Sydney” and “Blue Mountains”. Don’t use the author’s name – you probably won’t know it or you will likely get the spelling wrong. Click on “Search”.

I came up with a list of 61 books. Putting “Blue Mountains” in quotes reduces the list to 32. Search through the list, trying not to be distracted by all the other interesting titles and the maps and photos etc listed on the right. The book isn’t in the list. Why not? Try leaving off “Blue Mountains”. Enter “Search” again. The list blows out to 732. After going through 4 pages (and lots of interesting material) still no success. Try “Geology of Sydney” in quotes. No luck there either. Frustrating isn’t it? Try “Geology” and “Sydney” again but uncheck “Australian content”. 

EUREKA! There it is, 4 times on the first page. Click on the one of your choice. I chose the second and it took me to the Internet Archive of the University of Toronto, where you can read details of the book. On the far left, click on PDF to download the file. This will take some time. It took me 7 minutes to bring down the 422 page book. Before you start exploring the  book, SAVE IT! Click on “File”, then “Save page as” and then name and save the book wherever you want to put it. (Your computer may well have a different way to save the file, but be sure to do it immediately you have downloaded it. 

While this can be a frustrating process, it's worth coming to terms with it. Here are several other books which I downloaded while preparing for this Blog. You might try locating them!   

                                                                   

 

 

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BAKER'S HILL AND GLEN EDEN MINES NEAR DUNDEE NSW AUSTRALIA

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A mineralised zone cuts through Permian volcanic rocks south of Dundee in the New England area of NSW Australia. The location is just east of the New England Highway approximately 19 km north of Glen Innes. The southern end of the zone is on private land while the northern end is on a Travelling Stock Route adjacent to the highway.

Intermittent mining has taken place here since the late nineteenth century. I visited the public access sites on Friday 7^th June 2013 and was easily able to collect specimens of molybdenite in quartz. On earlier visits I have found specimens of wolframite, cassiterite and bismuth as well.

Two useful references you can download from DIGS (see the previous blog) are: The Molybdenum Industry in NSW (Mineral Resources 24, 1916, by EC Andrews) and Molybdenum in NSW (Mineral Resources 43, 1978, by CR Weber, IBL Paterson and DJ Townsend). Type in the word “molybdenite” in the “Subject Terms/Keywords” box. Both references appear on the first page of listings along with lots of other interesting references. A lot of good information can also be found by typing in “Glen Eden” in the “Locality” box.

 

The map is taken from Mineral Resources 24 and gives a good idea of the locations. The relevant pages are from 85-88. In Mineral Resources 43 see pages 49-51.

 While by no means as interesting as the Kingsgate mines, this place is still worth visiting.

See also my You Tube video here which should help you find the spot.

Here is the link to my You Tube playlist on gem hunting, mining and geology

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