STAGGY CREEK GEM FOSSICKING AREA NEAR INVERELL NSW AUSTRALIA

STAGGY CREEK GEM FOSSICKING AREA NEAR INVERELL NSW AUSTRALIA

Extract from "Diamonds in NSW"

Staggy Creek reserve is one of the few places in NSW where fossickers can go and have at least some chance of finding an alluvial diamond. It’s part of an extensive deep lead lying beneath the basalt, south of Inverell. Tin (cassiterite) was the main mineral being sought by miners in this area in the nineteenth century and diamonds were discovered during the search. This created a lot of interest at the time – and still does, judging by the amount of prospecting that has been going on during the last twenty years. Search DIGS using “Staggy Creek” as the locality and you will be surprised.

There’s a lot of good background information in my Blog “Alluvial Diamond Mining in the New England Region of NSW Australia” (here) and especially in the NSW Geological Survey publication “Diamonds in New South Wales”. You can download a copy from DIGS; the reference number is R00047949.

I’ve been there just once, at least 25 years ago. All I can remember finding is pieces of black tourmaline, which are everywhere.

Here’s what the Inverell Tourism website (here) has to say about Staggy Creek:

“STAGGY CREEK FOSSICKING AREA

Copeton diamonds - Australian Museum

The district’s rich volcanic soils can offer other gems and minerals. One such gem, is the amazing Diamond found near Copeton Dam; the Staggy Creek Fossicking Area provides a site where you can look for the Diamonds together with Black Tourmaline and Quartz. This is a rough dry area 28km from Inverell, you can take your water or dry sieve.

Contact Details: Copeton Dam Road (24km from the turn off Copeton Dam from Inverell)”      

This is what “Diamonds in NSW” has to say about the place.

Photo courtesy of Jewellery Pirate

“The Staggy Creek deposit is an isolated area of diamond-bearing Tertiary gravels exposed at the surface. There is no basalt overlying the deposit and granite bedrock surrounds the Tertiary gravels. The granite is remarkable in that it contains a number of potholes of circular shape and its surface appears to be the surface on which the Tertiary sediments were deposited.

The deposit consists of quartz pebbles, cobbles and boulders ranging from 5mm to 0.2m in diameter, jasper, a relatively large amount of tourmaline (much of which is unabraded), topaz and garnet (which is invariably present in the diamond bearing gravels). Many of the quartz boulders contains pencil tourmaline. An ironstone band similar to those at Kirk’s Hill and the Banca is present.” Read page 52 of the report for a fuller description.

Mindat (here) includes a reference to Staggy Creek.

Photo courtesy of Jewellery Pirate

“Staggy Creek lead, Copeton Dam, Hardinge Co., New South Wales, Australia

Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):	29° 50' 5'' South , 150° 53' 5'' East
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):	-29.8347337025, 150.884830683

Map sheets: SH 56-5, 9038-II-N. Coordinates: 295600mE, 6697500mN.
Placer deposit.

Mineral List:  Calcite, Cassiterite, Diamond, 'Garnet', Ilmenite, Magnetite, 'Olivine', Pyrite.”

Rather strangely, the Mindat list doesn’t include ‘tourmaline’, the most obvious mineral at Staggy Creek.

Here is a list of other resources you will find interesting.

Photo courtesy of Jewellery Pirate

Jewellery Pirate’s Blog. Thank you, JP, for the photographs of Staggy Creek. (Blog  no longer on the Internet February 2024.)

An account of a visit by the Campelltown Lapidary Club (here).

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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

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

Shoalhaven District Geology.

TOURMALINE IN QUARTZ LOCALITY WALLANGRA NSW

TOURMALINE IN QUARTZ LOCALITY WALLANGRA NSW

Photo by Wwoofa via the Australian Lapidary Forum

This is a well-known mineral collecting locality in northern NSW, on the western edge of what is commonly called the New England region. Unfortunately it is a place I’ve never visited so I am depending on the descriptions of others.

The Inverell Tourism website has this to say:  

“Wallangra Fossicking Area. Wallangra located north of Inverell has an area near the hall where you can hunt for Black Tourmaline in Quartz, once again this is a dry fossicking area. Contact Details: Wallangra Hall, Wallangra (65km north of Inverell) Ph: (02) 6728 8161.”

You may not find that particularly helpful. Knowing that the spot is near the Hall is good, but you also need to know that this is on the left hand side of the Yetman road. I’m sure you will find the place OK without ringing Wallangra. 

The spot is open freely to fossickers. Please do the right thing and leave your mechanical diggers at home. As well as your specimens, take home all your rubbish and other people’s as well if you come across any.

There is a stack of information available on the Australian Lapidary Forum. I suggest you become a forum member so you can access it. Here. You can then contribute to the Forum by telling members about your visit to Wallangra.

I will point out at this stage that Wallangra and Wallangarra are quite different places. The latter is just across the NSW border into Queensland on the New England Highway.

This is an extract from the Inverell 1:250000 geological map. It shows that Wallangra is situated in an area marked Pg (Permian Granite, actually part of the Bundarra Suite).

The Australian Stratigraphic Units Database contains this definition of the “granites” of the Bundarra Suite:

“Coarse- to very coarse-grained, porphyritic and equigranular (biotite)-(muscovite)-(garnet)-(cordierite) granite and leucogranite; K-feldspar megacrysts abundant in places.” This is the host rock in which the Wallangra tourmaline in quartz bodies are found.

I have been unable to find any account of the detailed geology of the occurrence.

Mindat (here), however, regards the site as significant. Here is what a search on the location produces:

“Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):	29° 13' 54'' South , 150° 53' 4'' East
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):	-29.2316666667, 150.884444444

Located south of Texas, Qld.

Wallangra (in Northern New South Wales) was the site of a quarry, the area is now a designated Fossicking area. There is a quartz outcrop which contains tourmaline.

Mineral List: Anatase, Brookite, Muscovite, Quartz, Schorl,'Tourmaline'”

You will notice that the word ‘tourmaline’ is in quotes. This is because tourmaline is the name of a mineral family, rather than an individual mineral. In this case, the mineral is schorl – commonly called black tourmaline. If you want to read more about the tourmaline group, check this Mindat reference here.

Photo by Wwoofa via the Australian Lapidary Forum

Photo by earthound via the Australian Lapidary Forum

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Shoalhaven District Geology.

CASSITERITE CRYSTALS FROM ELSMORE HILL NEAR INVERELL NSW AUSTRALIA

CASSITERITE CRYSTALS FROM ELSMORE HILL NEAR INVERELL NSW AUSTRALIA

Photo from ALF

A recently reactivated thread on the Australian Lapidary Forum (ALF) about a well-known mineral hunting locality near Inverell, in the New England region of NSW Australia, should remind us all of how precarious our access to collecting localities really is. Read the thread here. Follow it and if a petition is commenced, be sure to add your name to it. It would be a good idea to get involved with the Forum if you aren’t already.

There is a wealth of information available on this locality. I’ve gathered together a number of photographs from some of these and assembled them, into a You Tube slide show, which you will find here. Not only is Elsmore the site of one of the earliest 

Photograph from Minerama book "Cassiterite"

payable alluvial tin deposits in Australia (1871), but it has (in more recent years) become the source of some of the most superb cassiterite crystal specimens in the world. A search on eBay will show that they are in great demand. Until recently, access to the fossicking spot had been made legally possible in an unusual way. The local Inverell Lapidary Club has held a mining lease over the area for the use of its members. By becoming a member of the Club, visitors could legally fossick there. I imagine that the revenue raised has been used to defray the cost of maintaining the mining lease.

What has caused the Club to surrender its lease I cannot say. It may be that income was falling behind expenses or perhaps that the Club has an aging membership (as many lapidary clubs do) and continuing to provide this service simply became a burden. It could be that changes in the mining law are making it difficult for smaller operators to stay in business. Whatever the reason, follow the ALF thread for more information.

Here are some useful references for you to follow up. As you read you will discover that cassiterite and quartz are only two of the many mineral species which have been found at Elsmore Hill.

The first few are to be found in the DIGS data base and can easily be downloaded. The most comprehensive reference is: Geological Survey Report 45 (1966): The Geology and Tin Deposits of the Elsmore Area. The DIGS reference is R00050621. Related to this document, and incorporating much of it, is Elsmore Tin Mine, Inverell which incorporated material from mine records 1934-1981 (DIGS R00046476).

Diggings on the lease

You will discover that the basic geology consists of granite intruding Palaeozoic sediments, overlain by Tertiary basalt. The primary cassiterite deposits are associated with the granite intrusion. Secondary deposits include modern alluvial material and, in particular, “deep leads” – older alluvial material lying beneath the basalt. Much of the prospecting in the area has been (and still is) directed to locating payable wash in these concealed leads. The classic geological map is “Geological Map of the Tin-bearing district around Tingha, Stannifer and Elsmore” by Carne and Pittman (1910). (DIGS R00030525). There is a lot more recent material available also (Inverell metallogenic study) but these should help you to understand what the place is all about.

A search through DIGS shows that there many other reports available from this source. One is Partial relinquishment report EL7177 Elsmore 2011 Malachite Resources (DIGS RE0001817), which is quite recent. The article in Mindat includes further photographs, mineral lists and references here.

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Shoalhaven District Geology.

Tin Sluicing at Elsmore

GEM DEPOSITS ALONG THE SARA RIVER, NEW ENGLAND NSW AUSTRALIA

GEM DEPOSITS ALONG THE SARA RIVER 

NEW ENGLAND NSW AUSTRALIA

This area is one of the most interesting gem producing regions in New South Wales. It’s also one of the most frustrating because of the difficulty in gaining access to the river and its tributaries. The map is extracted from the Records of the Geological Survey of NSW 14(1), which contains a valuable article titled “Sapphires in the New England District, New South Wales”. If you would like to download a copy, try Trove or locate DIGS.

Backwater-Kookabookra area, 40km south-east of Glen Innes

A further complication is that the river is sometimes called the Mitchell River; adding to the confusion is the fact that the nearby Mann River also has the Mitchell River as an alternative name!

There is plenty of information in issues of “Gold, Gem and Treasure” magazine, the Australian Lapidary Forum (ALF) website (here) and on DIGS (if you can locate it). 

Practically every tributary of the Sara (Mitchell) river is worth fossicking. Unfortunately, they are nearly all either on private land, in a National Park or simply nowhere near a road or track. If you wish to get onto private land areas, you are going to have to approach landowners for permission. Many of them will have already had enough of trespassers, shooters, people who dig holes and don’t backfill them, fire lighters and fence cutters, so be prepared for an earful.

It isn’t at all obvious from the map, but the river rises on the upper left of the map (west of Bullwarra), passes under the Backwater road (signposted as the Mitchell River) and flows south of Mt Mitchell via the Horse Shoe Bend to Kookabookra and beyond. The creek south of it is coloured green to indicate that it carries sapphire. The fact is, so do most of the streams and gullies on the map.

As a guide for readers, I’ll say something about the three areas I have actually been to. Firstly, upstream of the Backwater road bridge. We checked this out once for a possible Minerama trip but rejected it because of our poor finds that day. This was on Bullwarra property. The area was mined for gems, probably in the 1970’s, and all I found was a few bits of sapphire on the track (evidently spilled with gravel on the way to the treatment plant) and a nugget of cassiterite (tinstone) two or three centimetres across, which I saw lying on the ground. We were unaware of the fact that Cockatoo Creek was also gem bearing, otherwise we would have checked it out too.The presence of gold and cassiterite (tin) in the wash is normal for the area. Whether any mining was ever carried on in this creek I cannot say.

The Horse Shoe Bend section of the river is accessible by 4WD vehicles along the Horse Shoe Bend fire trail, which is reached by following McGarry’s Lane and Aqua Park Road eastwards off the Backwater road, a little south of the Yarrow Creek bridge. The descent is quite spectacular, with Crown Mountain (granite outcrops) straight ahead at the beginning of the trail. From the fossicking point of view, the problem is that most of the area is now in the Warra National Park. See this article from National Parks and Wildlife (here). Although much is said about the flora, fauna, history etc nothing is said about the reason many people would want to go there – fossicking. I have been there only once and found gold and small gemstones in the river easily enough. Another DIGS document (Reference number R00046781) makes for interesting reading at this stage. It’s a summary of the prospecting done in the area by Mr W Madgwick of Glen Innes in 1974. There is private property all around and trespassers are certainly not welcome.

Sara River at Kookabookra. Photo by Wwoofa, ALF

Most of the information available concerns the third area, at Kookabookra. This is well known as a fossicking area which produces quartz crystals, black tourmaline (schorl), gold, cassiterite (tin), topaz, sapphire and zircon. Fortunately for our generation, the early miners were only after gold and tin and discarded the rest. The actual area is well described in the blogs I listed near the beginning of this blog. This land is, I believe, a crown land lease held by the adjacent landowner who has given permission for fossickers to work there. Please respect this permission and do not trespass elsewhere, camp, light fires or leave rubbish behind. There is a further accessible area at the Sara River bridge a kilometre or so downstream, on the Ward’s Mistake road. This branches off the Pinkett road on the right a short distance back towards Glen Innes.

The Mitchell River Dredge from the Pinkett history book

This stretch of the river was extensively dredged, especially in the depression years. Sue’s grandfather worked as a woodcutter for the Mt Mitchell  (Mitchell River) dredge and her mother began her schooling at the nearby Kookabookra school. If you can find a copy, the little book “Pinkett, Mogg’s Swamp, Kookabookra Past and Present” (1988) makes good reading. 

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Limestone Caves of NSW

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Shoalhaven District Geology.

SURFACE HILL GEM DEPOSIT GULF ROAD EMMAVILLE

SURFACE HILL GEM DEPOSIT GULF ROAD EMMAVILLE

Location of Surface Hill with the basalt outliers marked

 How often have you wished you were around in the “good old days”? It must have been easy to pick up gemstones then. Maybe.

“Australian and New Zealand Gemstones” (1972) by Bill Myatt has this statement on page 298 in a section about Emmaville. “The Gulf Road is not good in rainy weather, as it crosses four creeks; the crossings, however, are all cemented. Sixteen miles out, Bill Frappell’s Topaz Farm is on the left, where camping and fossicking is allowed on payment of a fee, the money going to charity.” I don’t know when this arrangement ceased, but I would guess more than 30 years ago.

The place we are talking about is correctly called Surface Hill. If you’re searching for information, don’t get confused with the many other Surface Hills around, especially the one on the Timbarra goldfield near Tenterfield. The name refers to the fact that the alluvial wash there was on the surface of the ground rather than in a creek bed or its banks. The place is about 2 km south of the Gulf Road, between Flagstone and Little Flagstone Creeks. Both Minerama and Emmaville Gemfest have conducted field trips there. The last I knew, it was part of the property called “Willow Creek”, where James and Kerry West conducted their business “The Fruit Salad Tree Company” (multi-grafted fruit trees). I believe the property has recently been sold.

Naturally, the old time miners were not interested in topaz. They were after tin (cassiterite) which was eagerly sought all over the Emmaville and Torrington districts from 1872. The cassiterite originated in fluids associated with the nearby crystallising granite. There are literally thousands of veins, dykes and impregnations which formed from the early Triassic Mole Granite. Some are within the granite itself, others are in the adjacent intruded rocks, such as those at Webb’s Silver Mine. At the Emmaville Emerald Mine, the pegmatite dykes can be traced from the intruded rocks into the granite itself.

From TWE David. Basalt outliers marked

The story at Surface Hill is entirely different. Here the cassiterite is found as waterworn grains in an old stream deposit. Let me quote TWE David (from his 1887 report on the Vegetable Creek Tin-Mining Field, DIGS reference R00031676, page 45): “The Tertiary gravels at Surface Hill form three outliers. At Surface Hill a flat-topped ridge of claystone is capped by a bare oval patch of tertiary gravel. The deposit has an extent of 1 acre and a thickness of 1 to 2 feet. The pebbles of which it is composed are principally quartz, from 1 to 6 inches in diameter, and as smooth as eggs. A great deal of tourmaline, as well as topazes, beryls, emeralds, and stream tin (alluvial cassiterite ed), are mixed through these gravels, which from their higher position appear to be older than the similar gravels underlying  two neighbouring outliers of basalt. In its lithological character, and in its stratigraphical relation to the “deep leads” this small outlier of gravel closely resembles the tertiary pebble beds at Cope Hardinge, near Tingha. The importance of these outliers rests not so much on the minerals contained in them, though that has been considerable, as on what they teach of the former wide distribution of stream tin deposits in early tertiary time. The gravels at Scrubby Gully and Surface Hill are over 6 miles distant from one another, the former being 3,360 feet above sea level, and the latter 2,460 feet; while those in the Ruby Hill outlier have an altitude of 1,885 feet, and are over 25 miles distant from Scrubby Gully.”

The mention of topaz, beryl and emerald should get any self-respecting fossicker’s heart racing. I’ve been out to Surface Hill a few times and never failed to find topaz, though not the other minerals. I have no doubt that this is because of the similar specific gravity of beryl to quartz: We look for topaz in the sieve centre because it is dense but forget the less dense beryl among the quartz fragments. It is the same story at Blatherarm and Scrubby Gully. You won’t find alluvial beryl unless you are looking for it.

David has more to say on page 164. “Beryl occurs most frequently in small waterworn round or oval prisms from ½ to 1 ½ inch long and from 1/8 to ¼ inch thick. The localities where it is most abundant are Surface Hill and Kangaroo Flat. The majority of specimens are pale green, and many are colourless. The gems generally contain a number of minute cavities, which of course detract immensely from their value. Some specimens from Kangaroo Flat, which have been cut and polished, are valued at about £4, the cutting and polishing having cost about £3.”  

The only other major source of information on Surface Hill I’ve been able to locate is in the Grafton-Maclean Mine Data records (DIGS Reference R00056102). There are two listings: Surface Hill Northwest (GR1012) and Surface Hill (GR1039). The descriptor for both is “Sn, topaz – industrial fossil placer (fluvial)”.

The 1906 SMH report

Surface Hill Northwest pretty well matches TWE David’s description; there is both a surface deposit and a deep lead under a small basalt cap. A large race carried water to work the gravel which is dated to A Bouveret in 1883. NOTE. The two dams on the creek running south and the existing water race from the creek could date from E Sturtridge’s work in 1906, which is not mentioned. See the Sydney Morning Herald note for 30^th June 1906 (here).

Surface Hill proper is a deep lead deposit with workings dating from 1878. To quote: “Numerous shafts and pits on side of hill. Wash around shafts has rounded white pebbles of quartz. Has known association with blue topaz and alluvial cassiterite.”

What would you see if you were able to get permission to go out there? Firstly, I suggest that you follow the water race from the creek and see where it goes. This is Surface Hill Northwest. All the topaz and beryl would have been discarded where the gravel was washed. The area where the surface gravel was removed is where I picked up numerous piece of topaz in 2001 solely because of the glint of the sun from cleavage faces. Find where the deep lead was mined.

The track continuing around the hill without crossing the creek should go to the main Surface Hill deep lead workings. Once again, beryl and topaz should be in any discarded gravel piles or in the gully where water carried away the waste.

This link here will take you to the ALF thread on Surface Hill, from which I “lifted” Wwoofa’s photograph below.

Field Trip to Surface Hill. Photo "Wwoofa", Australian Lapidary Forum

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Shoalhaven District Geology.

REID’S COPPER MINE, NEAR EMMAVILLE NSW AUSTRALIA

REID’S COPPER MINE, NEAR EMMAVILLE 

NSW AUSTRALIA

My attention was first drawn to a place of this name when I was looking over the Grafton 1:250000 geological map. I can’t locate a download site for this map, but you can get the 2001 Metallogenic map here. (The material to be found at this website is new to me and looks to be very useful). I was primarily interested in locating Webb’s Silver Mine (see my Blog on that place). Right on the road from Emmaville is the number 12, which the legend tells me is the location of Reid’s Copper Mine. On the 2001 map the number is 1053.

I made the trip out there on the 10^th October, 1988. The spot is on the left hand side of the road, shortly after a steep climb. This is the Grampians ridge and there are good views back towards Emmaville and ahead to the Mole Tableland. The location (at

that time, anyway) is entirely in the road reserve. I observed two shafts, nearly filled in with rock rubble and general rubbish. A narrow mineral vein was present in the wall of one of the shafts and the rock appeared to be quartzite. There was some quartz feldspar porphyry on the dumps. I collected specimens of malachite, azurite, a sulfide mineral (which was most likely chalcopyrite or pyrite) and fluorite from the dump. There was clear, pale green and occasionally purple fluorite scattered all over the dump, especially on the side away from the road.

Subsequently, I described the location as a possible self-guided field trip in the first Minerama book (Molybdenite) which may be downloaded from this Blog (February 2024). This made the place well known to fossickers, so whether or not you can still collect similar material today I can’t say. If someone has been there recently, then making a comment (below) letting us all know what the place is like now, would be most welcome.

Here is the earliest report I have been able to find. It’s from Edgeworth David’s report of 1887 “Geology of the Vegetable Creek Tin-Mining Field”, page 160. You can download the entire document from DIGS: Reference number R00031676. Note that there is no mention of fluorite.

This extract is from the report titled “Grafton Maclean 1:250 000 Metallogenic Map - Metallogenic Study and Mineral Deposit Data Sheets (metallogenic explanatory notes)” downloadable from DIGS. The reference number is R00056102. The map referred to in paragraph 1 is included in the download.

When you read this, it is obviously referring to the same place I visited in October 1988. Again, it is curious that there is no mention of fluorite. There are several possible explanations. One is that I mistakenly identified some other mineral as fluorite, perhaps quartz. This is unlikely, because I’ve been there with others several times since and we have always found fluorite on the dump. Another is that when the geological field work was done for the metallogenic study, the location was confirmed but the information on the minerals was taken from David’s 1887 report. If this in fact some other prospect and not actually Reid's Copper Mine, then we have a possible solution to the dilemma.

JE Carne’s report “The Copper Mining Industry and the Distribution of Copper Ores in New South Wales” (1908) (DIGS reference R00050669 ) gives information about numerous copper mines and prospects. The New England section begins on page 304. Scanning through this “mine of information” shows that, in the Emmaville district, copper minerals and fluorite had been found together at the Bald Nob Mine, about 5 miles north of Emmaville, and Portion 2, parish Paradise North, County Gough. So there is certainly a precedent locally for this type of occurrence. Perhaps there has been some confusion between locations at some point.

Another useful reference on the Net is Mindat (here). This is a remarkable world-wide data base on almost anything to do with minerals. Searching for “Reid’s Copper Mine” only gives information we’ve already quoted above; there is no mention of fluorite. David places it in "Portion 600, Parish of Strathbogie North". Mindat says "Portion 61". 

“Bald Nob Mine” confirms the occurrence of fluorite and copper minerals. The location of the mine is said to be approximately 2km north-east of Emmaville. Searching for “fluorite” and “Emmaville” simultaneously brings up quite a few fluorite localities, amongst which is “Reids/Willowie Mine”, approximately 3km north-east of Emmaville. Then there is “Say’s Prospect”, approximately 6km WNW of Emmaville, Wells’s Lode 1, approximately 6km north-west and Well’s Lode 3, approximately 7.5 km north-west.

All this suggests that there must be more mine dumps in the area worth locating. Add a comment below if you would like to share further information.

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Shoalhaven District Geology.

WEBB’S SILVER MINE NEAR EMMAVILLE, NSW AUSTRALIA

WEBB’S SILVER MINE NEAR EMMAVILLE 

NSW AUSTRALIA

Please take note: Practically all localities mentioned in these Blogs are on private property, under a mining lease or both. No-one should enter without permission from the landowner or lessee as appropriate.

The mine is marked "Silver" 7 (upper left)

I became aware of the existence of Webb’s Silver Mine (also known as Collison’s (NOT Collisions)) while I was still at school as a result of numerous visits to the late and much lamented Geological and Mining Museum in Sydney. This would have been in the mid 1950’s. The photos and specimens really piqued my interest in geology and mineralogy in particular.

It wasn’t until October 1988 that I made my one and only visit to the site when I rode my pushbike out there. The mine is reached by traveling 9-10 km after leaving The Gulf road, not far out of Emmaville, and then following a track to the right for a further 2.5 km. The mine site is usually described as being on Little Plant Creek, which runs into the Beardy River not far to the north. The map illustrated is the Grafton 1:250000 geological sheet.

My notes made that day mention a steel poppet head over a well-preserved shaft, numerous derelict sheds and ruins, 2X5 head stamper batteries, one in reasonable condition, piles of drill cores and specimens of galena, sphalerite and arsenopyrite on the dumps.

Photo by Wwoofa, Australian Lapidary Forum

Photo  by Wwoofa

Since then, several fossicking trips have be organised to Webb’s during the Emmaville Gemfest. The area is held under lease by Silver Mines Ltd; you can read their summary of the future prospects of the site here (now missing). I quote from this source: “Highest grade undeveloped silver project in Australia”, “a JORC compliant resource of over 12Moz of silver”, “From 1884 to1901 approximately 55,000t were mined at an average grade of at least 23oz/t”, “The current resources at a 70ppm Ag cut-off are approximately 1.49Mt @ 245ppm Ag, 0.27% Cu, 0.71% Pb and 1.56% Zn”.

The silver price is somewhat depressed at the moment (September 2014) which no doubt is quite depressing for the company, which is sitting on a great resource waiting for the right time to begin extracting it profitably.

Taken from Mole Tableland map DIGS R00041396

The classic reference to the geology of the Emmaville and Torrington areas is TWE David’s “Geology of the Vegetable Creek Tin-Mining Field”, 1887. (DIGS reference R00031676, if you wish to download a copy.) The relevant pages are 156/9. David tells us that the vein was discovered by Mr L Webb, that it can be traced for several miles, that the metalliferous part of the vein is nowhere more than 3 feet wide and that the ore minerals present are galena, copper pyrites, mispickel and “a variety of grey copper containing silver and a trace of gold (silver fahlerz)”. We know copper pyrites as chalcopyrite, mispickel as arsenopyrite and fahlerz as “fahlore”, a complex mineral of the tennantite-tetrahedrite family, containing at least 5 metals (iron, copper, zinc, silver and antimony) as well as arsenic and sulfur.

Another reference, written around the time when mining was at its peak, is “The Mineral Resources of NSW” (DIGS reference R00051137) compiled by EF Pittman in 1901. If you want to read what mining was like at that time, start at page 111. The photo of the mine is taken from this source. This is definitely a book that readers of this Blog should download.

From Pittman circa 1901

The comprehensive reference “The Mineral Deposits of NSW (Markham and Basden, 1975, DIGS Reference R00037944) has a lot of information on the mine, commencing on page 379 in the section dealing with the Mole Granite. We learn that the main shaft is 203m deep, with 7 major levels, that 3 separate ore shoots were mined, the main one yielding over 40 000t of ore containing 760-920 g/t of silver as well as significant quantities of the other metals.

The various documents available from the Web which have been uploaded by Silver Mines Ltd will give you a summary of their prospecting and that of their predecessors, which has been quite extensive since mining was active. Here are several:

From DIGS: Review of Environmental Factors (Exploration Activities at Webb’s Silver Mine) 2012 (R00070524). This is a report prepared by Geolink Pty Ltd for Silver Mines Ltd.

Report for Silver Mines Ltd 2010. Here. This is a good summary of the geology and potential of the mineral deposit.

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