Quartz, Australia

Hey Rock,

I am into silly questions - and sadly I have a few sillynesses with my time. Silly me but I do three jobs, I look after an Airport terminal rebuild, run my business and tutor construction some evenings. ;)

So to keep in good with my dearest ones (and stop the dog barking at me, by remembering my face) and so I can keep spending money on glorified concrete aggregate (not my description) I will limit my current input to adding some photos from my collection at the moment.

I reviewed my photo list of quartz etc and a number of photos are reasonable but can be improved, so i will retake before I post them.

I will work with Ralph off list on other Tas/Aussie stuff.

Re: Enita Valley Scepter quartzes from S. Aus, check out Min record, Vol. 33, No. 6, Nov 2002 by Don McColl

cheers

Andrew Tuma

To move things around.
1) split thread at new quartz article
2) merge threads (use new as first thread, original thread as second - or make it into three threads if just want to move post up)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/13/2009 10:41AM by David Von Bargen.

David and Rock - thanks for that, it seems to have worked (I'm learning!). I have not deleted any posts but I am oepn on that.
Ralph

Regards,
Ralph

Hi Andrew
I understand the time issues, I have not finished any of the posts I have started but it does not take long to start and others will help add data and photos and there is no rush. I can help with anything you would like to work on. I thought I would have had a bit of rock sorting and photography time this easter but have been busy outdoors most of the time, installing a new tank, building a shadehouse and gardening, making the most of the weather.
Thanks for the Entia valley ref - I recall it, but had not chased it up so thats saved me some time thanks.
If you have any good quartzes from around Aust I would be keen to see them on Mindat.
Ralph

Regards,
Ralph

Hi Ralph, Rock,

I have added a few Tassie and Oz big island quartz photos to my list, have a look - I found a few that you were looking for photos to add to named Oz areas.

After the Ralph comments I feel real bad:(, as I haven't dug, built or renovated anything over Easter, I should be courageous and helpout a little. B)
Rock, Can I pick a mineral I like and have a bit of local knowledge of? ie can I start Cassiterite ?? I assume this will be a split listing between either countries or even just continents rather than a single list.

Let me know what you gents think

Andrew T

Ralph, We should not forget the agate and opals, chrysophrase etc from Australia. Any idea about how many images for those alone should be in the article?

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Rock, maybe as a subsection- "micro-crystalline quartz"?? Do we include altered material like "Tigers eye" etc or fossalised wood and Man fern?

Ralph. can you do a Mindat location for Lune river, I have a couple of stunning opalised Man Ferns that would look good on the site.

Andrew

Rock, I am inclinded to agree with Andrew - there are lots of good sites for agate, petrified woood, chrysoprase etc, and it could overwhelm crystallised quartz - perhaps a separate article may be best?
Ralph

Regards,
Ralph

Ralph, Andrew,
I have long felt that the separation of the mineral/crystal literature and the mineral/lapidary stuff is a bad idea. I think they should all be together, after all they are all minerals. If you are digging a lapidary quality jasper in a quarry in Oregon and in the quarry you find small cavities with the worlds best weddellite crystals I think that locality should be represented with pictures of both. Just because the locality doesn't produce crystals and only massive material I don't think is grounds for divorcing it from the whole expert knowledge we are trying to capture here. Some of the Australian tiger eye is I think by far the best in the world. Ideally I would like to see good pictures of it in place in the mine, pictures of what pieces of the various kinds of rough look like and then some fine examples of what has been done with it. I have one small stunning polished slab of the stuff in my collection and would like to have more. I think by all means we should put the Laguna agate locality right in with the other minerals from chihuahua and show a real good variety of them, and the same for a number of the other localities. The only limitation we have in these thread posting is that they will only hold about 60,000 characters before up chucking. If the Australian Quartz article gets to long, then I would suggest that it might be broken up into various Australian states. I would like nothing better to get some raving lapidary nuts involved in mindat to try and grab as much space in our articles as they can to showcase their interests just as we welcome guys who love their local quartzes. We can then get a chance to make them eat a little mineralogy and it would broaden our perspective as well. I think we should insist however that good pictures of the rough material be shown along with some of the "finished goods". Cut and polished Variscite nodules from Fairfield Utah are OK, but Australian tiger eye and agates are not? What is all that about.

I would also hope that someone will come along and give us a good article on for example the Dominican Republic and stick in a nice comprehensive section on amber and laramar to name two. I would like to see a nice article on red coral and pearls, though we would probably have to tweak the locality listings to accommodate them. The IMA can ostracize these kinds of things if they want, but I assure you the rest of the world feels differently and we do after all live in the world.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

Rock
I can see your point about encouraging lapidary involvement but it starts to beg the question about whether we are focussing on minerals on this site or everything including rocks and fossils (as in Jasper and petrified wood ) - I can see some purists getting very jumpy! X( And as for Amber - I was surprised it is on Mindat, but as an extension do we include ivory, ebony, synthetics etc? I must admit I seem to have added a couple bitumen locations myself! (shame!) :S Maybe Jolyon would like to draw a line in the sand somewhere?
Ralph

PS _ I note there are only 2 pictured Mindat sites in Australia with agates and chrysoprase and none for petrified wood or tigers eye - there are hundreds of sites so it may need some work! I do have a few that I could photograph for starters (I am not a complete purist).

Regards,
Ralph

G,day Ralph
I see that Oban river, near Guyra , NSW, hasnt been mentioned . The quality of the Smoky quartz is very high, from this location. See attached pic. Size 11cm ......Greg

The "mineral" name file has a fairly extensive listing of minerals and substances (synthetics and simulants) to help people differentiate real minerals from the fakes and obsolete names. There are listings for things like Odontolite and amber, but recent organic materials such as ebony and pearl aren't included.

Greg
A nice one, thanks - are you uploading it so I can link to it? Any details on the site and specimens (size, number etc) we can use?
ralph

Regards,
Ralph

Ralph,
Synthetics, Ivory, Jet, Ebony etc. I don't think we need to draw a line in the sand. The problem with that is that people are forever kicking sand over it or the rive changes its banks etc. Will mineralogy finally incorporate nano minerals into its definition of what a mineral is? I am not all that keen on including Synthetics, Ivory etc though I think Jet might be included. It comes from the ground as a solid and the localities are pretty well defined. Some guy picks up something from the earth and takes it to a mineralogist or a geologist and asks what is this thing, is it any good?. Should we not tell him? Should we say, "Sorry, you had the misfortune of picking up something that is by our strict standards not a mineral and we can't talk to you"? As for synthetics and the rest, I can see including some of them, especially when they are sometimes confused with natural minerals and passed off as natural minerals. Some of these could well be used to illustrate the differences just like some pictures of good or poor fakes of emeralds and diamonds would be useful in the articles that cover those items. I think our problem here will not be that we will be over run with these kinds of things, but rather that we will find it difficult to find people to write about them intelligently in relation to minerals. We do have a Lapidary and Faceting section here on Mindat, but it is rarely ever used. The lapidary folks feel uncomfortable here. Are there any websites for lapidary and gem people like mindat? I don't think so. But there are a lot of these people out there looking for a home. I am not suggesting that we necessarily make a home for them but perhaps we could try and be a little more friendly and offer some of them a little shelter from time to time and show that we too appreciate many of the same things they do.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.

OK Rock I see your point. I look at a lot of synthetic materials and concretes etc in my job, including frequently having to tell people their treasure they want identified is glass or slag, no matter how pretty, and so I guess stretching the boundaries of mineralogy may be useful. I will see if we can find a few more photos to go in.
Ralph

Regards,
Ralph

Ok gents, now that we have a final call on the layout of this quartz entry and all types of crystalline quartz are to be included I will get busy and post a number of Agate, Fossilised material, Tiger eye etc from Oz. Whats the current process in adding new locations???

Most of material came from the collection of Keith Lancaster, sadly I have sold many of the better pieces over the last few years, but have kept some on display.

Rock, your comments are interesting, if we go back a generation or two, a good number of the mineral collectors were very avid lapidarists and collected as many self polished specimens as natural crystals. I wonder why there has been a clear separation of the two interests. Some polished sections are just stunning under good lighting and could never be properly appreciated without being cut into slices and polished. And I have two bits of slag that are just amazing.

Though I will admit, i would rather spend my last dollars at a show in a nice crystal cluster instead of a slab of Agate.

Andrew

Andrew
Although its hard to beat a good crystal I admit to being sucked in by the odd polished specimen, rock, fossil etc. Just dont spend your last $ on a piece of slag though.

Re adding new locations, just log in, check its not there somewhere, then go the the nearest district already in Mindat and add a sublocality with the appropriate button. Eg Do a search on Tasmania, click on the name-link, then press add sublocality, the type in eg. Lune River before the Tasmania in the locality name box. Add any location description and reference if you have one, then save. Then add the mineral names separated by commas. Let us know of any problems.

Ralph

Regards,
Ralph

Hi there,

Not sure if this topic is still open?
Perhaps I can add a couple of localities which has produced nice specimens in recent years.

From the New England region of NSW I have collected some interesting smoky and amethyst zoned crystals from weathered pegmatites in the Ewingar Creek area, and also north of Drake. This area form part of the great dividing range and is located east of Tenterfield.
First we have some images of the Ewingar specimens:



And from near Drake, some weathered pale scepter Amethyst:


I'll follow this post up with a couple more localities shortly.

Following my last post, another locality which hasn't been mentioned here is Kinsgate NSW.
Many fine specimens of Quartz were found during mining for Molydenite in early 1900's.
Here are some assorted Quartz specimens from the Kinsgate area:

Patric, Yes, the topic is still open. I hope it will always be open for localities that we don't have and better images from those we do. Those are interesting specimens and some will eventually find their way into the article. Thanks for bringing them to our attention. I have not been active much here on best minerals recently because I had to take a month out to do the Tucson show. After the Tucson show I have been heavily involved in trying to finish scanning all my mineral pictures. Almost done. Then comes the long and tedious job of photoshoping them all and uploading them to Mindat. Hope to have that all done in a couple of months and then I can return my attention to this project.

Rock Currier
Crystals not pistols.