John's New England Minerals and General Geology Blog: Old Mine

Sunday, 15 December 2013

THE BOTTOM END, YARROW CREEK NEAR GLEN INNES NSW AUSTRALIA

THE BOTTOM END, YARROW CREEK

NEAR GLEN INNES NSW AUSTRALIA

Working the crack

This place takes its name from the simple fact that it is the bottom end of the property where we have often fossicked. Upstream from it is the place we call The Blockup and below, in the next property, is the Old Mine.

This stretch of the creek begins with a long pool, followed by a short section of rocky ground before the creek passes through another pool. After this there are more rocks and pools with some places where the creek vanishes beneath the rocks, before you come to the boundary fence.

The first pool looks deep but that’s about all I know about it. The first rocky section has been well fossicked but possibilities remain for new ground on the left bank. The landowner told me once that, years ago, the creek had been dammed in a dry season at the end of the first pool before the second pool had been pumped out. No doubt some good finds were made. You could hardly fail in a place like that. Not knowing about that event, I tried some of the more obvious spots and scored some cutters. One was a sapphire piece of

The lower end of the first pool

around 10 carats which I told Sue was tourmaline until I took it up to her with the next sieve. As it turned out, one end was very dark, the rest was blue. I’ve been holding off writing this blog entry as I wanted to include a photograph of it. Sorry, I must have sold it with some other blues before we moved away from Glen Innes.

Minerama 2010 finds

Most of our fossicking here happened around 2002-3 and I have no photos of finds from that time. Probably our best find came immediately after Minerama in March 2010. A few good finds were made on the Monday trip just below the end of the first pool. Two weeks later I worked on a crack which crossed the creek, using a yabby pump to get all I could out of it. The first finds included some good clear quartz (no fossicker I know throws that back again) so I was confident that there were better things to follow. The photo shows that I wasn’t disappointed. The following week produced some more, but that was it for that particular crack. No doubt there is more to come.

See the Blog entries for The Blockup and the Old Mine for more information.

My You Tube video on The Bottom End may be found here .

https://johnsbluemountainsblog.blogspot.com/2013/12/links-to-all-blog-entries-and-relevant.html All Blue Mountains blogs and videos

https://johnsnewenglandminerals.blogspot.com/2013/12/list-of-all-blog-entries-to-date.html

All New England and other Geology blogs and videos

https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/1325599670344725659?pli=1

Limestone Caves of NSW

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/1147003616874115974/2430103125095714141

Song Studies. Bible studies based on hymns and songs

https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/1515863000684737715

Shoalhaven District Geology.

Good finds from the crack described above (one day's work)

Sunday, 14 July 2013

THE OLD MINE LOCALITY YARROW CREEK NEAR GLEN INNES NSW

THE OLD MINE LOCALITY YARROW CREEK

NEAR GLEN INNES NSW

This is an area on Yarrow Creek that we have visited many times, both during Minerama (the annual Glen Innes gem and mineral show) and on our regular Wednesday outings with the Baptist Church Fossicking Group.

The only evidence that there had been sapphire mining there was a few ponds (the remains of settling dams for sediment) and a mound where a trommel had evidently been set up. Just when this took place is unknown. I’ve found nothing about the spot in DIGS (the NSW Geological Survey document site) but I would guess it happened in the 1960’s when lots of small mines were operating all over the Glen Innes and Inverell region.

Everything changed one Wednesday in 2008 when dozens of cuttable pyrope garnets turned up in one hole near the old trommel site. They were accompanied by similar sized black spinels and poorer quality sapphires. This was at the beginning of winter, so a further search had to wait until the following summer.

First day finds - pyrope garnet

It was then that the first of several gem bonanzas turned up. It became clear that the miners had dumped back into the creek all the garnets and black spinels they had found along with the poorer grade sapphires. They must have had a market for larger zircons because there were few of these.

This led to a regular “feeding frenzy” on our outings and no boulders were left unturned in the search for more goodies. Since then a search further has revealed only a little spillover into the adjacent waterholes so I guess we found most of the miners’ waste.

Make sure you check out the videos on The Old Mine on my You Tube site. You will find them here and here.