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).

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.

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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All New England and other Geology blogs and videos

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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.

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 . 

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All New England and other Geology blogs and videos

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Limestone Caves of NSW

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Song Studies. Bible studies based on hymns and songs

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Shoalhaven District Geology.

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

BACK CREEK, PINKETT NEAR GLEN INNES, NSW AUSTRALIA

BACK CREEK, PINKETT NEAR GLEN INNES 

NSW AUSTRALIA

Back Creek is the first major creek south of Yarrow Creek on the Pinkett road, about 25km south east of Glen Innes. As seen from the road, there are numerous granite outcrops, especially on the eastern side. Near the point at which the creek moves away from the road, outcrops disappear and sand appears to make up the creek bed from here on. At the point where the Pretty Valley road crosses Back Creek there is nothing to be seen but sand. All this country is private property, needless to say, so access will need to be arranged for fossicking.

The above quote comes from the book “Exploration Data Package for the Glen Innes 1:100,000 Sheet Area” by RE Brown (1995). The DIGS reference is GS1995/231. It strongly suggests that good gemstones are to be found in these south eastern areas. Our numerous trips to Yarrow Creek confirm that this is indeed true; however there have been sapphire mines at various places along the Yarrow where sufficient accumulation of wash has happened. 

Yarrow Creek is shown as a sapphire bearing stream in the following references:

Sapphire in NSW 1983 DIGS reference Information Brochure 40, Sapphire in NSW 1995 DIGS Information Brochure 41, Quarterly Notes 103 (1997) DIGS reference QN 103, Records of the Geological Survey of New South Wales, Volume14, Part 1 by AA McNevin (1972) DIGS Records 14(1) . 

Back Creek topaz

Interestingly, neither Pretty Valley, nor Rainy Swamp nor Back Creek appear on any of the maps in these references. In the case of Rainy Swamp sapphires were certainly mined there. Pretty Valley appeared to be virgin when we first investigated it. Back Creek showed signs of old prospecting along both of its major tributaries upstream of the Pinkett road. Yet no trace could be found in DIGS of any mining or prospecting in these three areas. All three have produced good gemstones on our many visits.

I have mentioned in the Blog entries on both Rainy Swamp and Pretty Valley that their gemstones differ from those in Yarrow Creek, but resemble each other. The same is true for the gems from Back Creek. Indeed, I think it likely that the Rainy Swamp deposit is a former course of Back Creek. It would not be difficult to imagine Back Creek having formerly flowed where Bladey Grass Creek is today (Pretty Valley).

The typical wash from Back Creek produces a concentrate containing sapphire, zircon, spinel, tourmaline, topaz and cassiterite. There is a great deal of clear and smoky quartz. The topaz has been found in pieces up to 150 carats, mostly colourless but with some blue and apricot coloured stones. There is a lot of black tourmaline and I have seen one piece only of gemmy tourmaline. The sapphire is mostly opaque but clear stones of all the usual colours turn up. There is a little beryl to be found as well.

Gemmy tourmaline from Back Creek

I have seen two “bonanzas” found there when dozens of cutters suddenly appeared in a relatively small area. I was involved in finding a third and it was extraordinary to come upon wash peppered with all the gems mentioned when it was normal to see just a few in the sieve. That’s what gem hunting is all about and I have to say that it was a sad day when we lost access to the best part of the creek in 2002. This was the result of fossickers on a Minerama trip not filling in their holes.

If I ever had the opportunity to fossick again, Back Creek would be the place I would go.

I have no photos of fossicking at Back Creek, unfortunately, and just a few of some finds from there. I’m looking forward to reading about future successes by readers of this Blog. 

You can experience fossicking around Glen Innes through my You Tube site until you pay the area a visit. Click here. 

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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.

Back Creek topaz

RAINY SWAMP NEAR GLEN INNES NSW AUSTRALIA

RAINY SWAMP NEAR GLEN INNES NSW AUSTRALIA

As a gemstone producing location, Rainy Swamp is unusual in several ways. Firstly, the place is not shown on any of the maps depicting sapphire localities and secondly the wash does not appear to be derived from any source nearby. In fact, I would suggest that the gems are being recycled from remnants of an old stream bed a little above the level of the present day swamp. Conversations with people who mined here 40 years ago confirm that the wash horizon could not be traced further upstream around the edge of the swamp.

Furthermore, everything points to a different

Typical small gems

source from that of the gemstones in Yarrow Creek (into which Rainy Swamp Spring Creek actually flows). The percentage of cutters is lower, the zircons are a different shade of pink, there are no garnets and there is an abundance of schorl tourmaline. Quartz crystals are frequent and topaz is found occasionally. If anything, there is a strong resemblance to the mineral assemblage in Back Creek, the next stream to the south. I would venture to suggest that the Rainy Swamp occurrence is a remnant of a former course of Back Creek.

 
The bulk of the material found at Rainy Swamp seems to be miners' waste, though there have been pockets of untouched wash found in less accessible places. It is a very rocky area and the best stones have been found underneath the many granite boulders.

Most fossickers enjoy Rainy Swamp because there is always something to be found, whether it be just a few small sapphires and zircons, some nice quartz crystals, chunks of black tourmaline or the elusive piece of topaz.

120 carat topaz

Tourmaline crystal

An article appeared in "Gold Gem and Treasure" magazine in September 1999 called "Summer Fossicking in the Ranges Around Glen Innes". Although the location is not named (naturally) it is Rainy Swamp. What is described is a part of the old lead which the miners must have missed. Unfortunately, on our many visits we have been unable to find a similar spot due to the disturbance of the hillside since 1999.
Check out my gem hunting videos from around Glen Innes here . 

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All New England and other Geology blogs and videos

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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.

MISCELLANEOUS MINERALS FROM YARROW CREEK NEAR GLEN INNES NSW

MISCELLANEOUS MINERALS FROM YARROW CREEK 

NEAR GLEN INNES NSW

All gem hunters in Yarrow Creek soon become familiar with the most abundant minerals to be found there. Quartz, as always, leads all the rest in quantity. Mostly it's waterworn, but the occasional near pristine crystal turns up. 

Along with the quartz, orthoclase felspar is sometimes seen. No doubt, both the quartz and felspar are derived from veins in the granite, which outcrops in most places fossickers go. 

Black spinel (pleonaste, blackjack), corundum (a high proportion of which is gem quality sapphire), zircon and pyrope garnet are found everywhere. Sometimes the vagaries of the currents during floods cause the zircon and garnet to be concentrated separately, though always with spinel and corundum.

The less common minerals,but still common enough to be found every visit or so, are enstatite and schorl tourmaline. Topaz is found once in a while, perhaps one or two pieces in a year of regular weekly outings. Once a blue specimen was found. Just once a pale specimen of ruby  turned up in my sieve, and this has already been illustrated in the blog entry on pink sapphires.

Finally, there are the miscellaneous things that turn up, which, while not all one-offs, will bother most 

Ilmenite

fossickers trying to identify them. Ilmenite is reasonably common but not normally noticed. It occurs as cylindrical, metallic looking lumps, though why it is in this form I do not know .

carnelian 3cm across

Silicified wood 11cm long

I've seen the occasional piece of agate, though I failed to photograph one. The photo of the specimen of orange chalcedony (carnelian) is a one-off, as are the silicified wood and rutile. The chalcedony would be related to the silicification of wood trapped beneath the nearby basalt flows, though I would have expected them to be more abundant. 

Rutile 2cm long

The specimen of rutile is an unexpected find, mainly because I have never seen another. Such a vast amount of rutile has accumulated in heavy mineral deposits along our coasts that I would have expected more to turn up in creeks like Yarrow which drain in that direction.

Lastly, here is a specimen about which I know nothing. It was found amongst the sieve concentrates, so it's reasonably dense. It doesn't look like the rest of the corundum, which I thought it was initially. It remains a mystery mineral.

Unknown mineral

Check my gem hunting videos from around Glen Innes 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

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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.

The mineral we all want to find: 16.8 carat blue sapphire