While stumbling through wet bush with an old topographic section of the Newee Creek Mine, I stumbled over two large pieces of ore, I could hardly believe my luck because the Railways had removed the old headframe and filled the shaft some years ago (it is illegal in fact to walk along the railway access track to the old shaft site, so I had to keep to the bush nearby) and the original adit has almost disappeared. When broken open the ore revealed many minerals, but the one that caught my eye was a deep red to black mineral which has a fairly high specific gravity (around 5.8). I was able to separate one prismatic crystal to study, it has an adamantine almost metallic lustre, it is deep red when light goes through it. I am confident that it is pyrargyrite and I will make another trip to the locality to further check the old adit area (with plenty of leech and tick repellant!)
I have tried to use the PIC facility to include a photograph of the 1.5x1x1mm crystal, but I do not know whether it will be in this text, I will post the phot separately on my page as well. Cheers

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