Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):	31° 38' 3'' South , 119° 34' 54'' East
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):	-31.63412,119.58154
GeoHash:	G#: qdmh11htg
Locality type:	Mine
Köppen climate type:	BSk : Cold semi-arid (steppe) climate

The McIntosh Gold Mine is near the intersection of the Marvel Loch-Forrestania and Parker Range Roads. It is a short distance south-west of the intersection.

The mine was developed by Billy McIntosh, the second person to arrive at Parker Range after W.M. Parker discovered gold here in 1888. In 1891, McIntosh Gold Mining Company was floated in Adelaide with 80 000 capital. According to the prospectus, Billy gets nothing from the float, the entire shareholder money being used for the purchase of a battery and development. Laws at the time did not cover mis-truths made by mining companies, and there is no way Billy would have just given the mine away. Especially considering the capital was far more than what was needed to develop the mine.

The battery was purchased from the nearby Queenslander mine. It did not crush for the public, and was idle for long periods. Once the Coolgardie goldfield was announced, the mine was abandoned as miners fled to this incredibly rich field, and the battery was left to rust away.

J.W. Powell was mine manager. He struggled to get labour and materials to operate the mine even before the Coolgardie rush.

In 1912, a party of seven tributers were operating the mine. In 1918, the Golden Butterfly Company, from the Banker mine elsewhere in the district, took out a 12 month option over the mine.

Shortly after the discovery in 1889, several gold specimens were presented to the Perth Museum from the McIntosh reef, showing quartz peppered with minute specks of gold and gold flakes. These will be hidden somewhere in the bowels of the museum warehouse with the 30 000 other specimens it owns, and that the public have never seen.

The site covers two major shear zones, 1 kilometre and 0.4 kilometres west of the Parker Range banded iron formation horizon. The western line covers the historic mines called Searchlight, Ripper (Piemonte), McIntosh and Garibaldi. The main mine on the eastern line was called LSD. Production records from McIntosh were not recorded. Most of the work was down to 26 metres below the surface which marked the water level and limit of oxidation.

Commodity List

This is a list of exploitable or exploited mineral commodities recorded at this locality.

Mineral List

5 valid minerals.

Regional Geology

This geological map and associated information on rock units at or nearby to the coordinates given for this locality is based on relatively small scale geological maps provided by various national Geological Surveys. This does not necessarily represent the complete geology at this locality but it gives a background for the region in which it is found.

Click on geological units on the map for more information. Click here to view full-screen map on Macrostrat.org

Archean 2500 - 4000 Ma ID: 724794

mafic extrusive rocks 74255 Age: Archean (2500 - 4000 Ma) Description: Metabasalt, high-Mg basalt, tholeiitic basalt, carbonated basalt, agglomerate, mafic schist, dolerite, amphibolite; porphyritic basalt and dolerite; komatiitic basalt; mafic pyroclastics; minor mafic schist with granite intercalations Comments: igneous mafic volcanic; synthesis of multiple published descriptions Lithology: Igneous mafic volcanic Reference: Raymond, O.L., Liu, S., Gallagher, R., Zhang, W., Highet, L.M. Surface Geology of Australia 1:1 million scale dataset 2012 edition. Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia). [5]

Neoarchean - Mesoarchean 2500 - 3200 Ma ID: 3189632

Archean volcanic rocks Age: Archean (2500 - 3200 Ma) Comments: Yilgarn Craton Lithology: Greenstone belt; mafic-ultramafic volcanic rocks Reference: Chorlton, L.B. Generalized geology of the world: bedrock domains and major faults in GIS format: a small-scale world geology map with an extended geological attribute database. doi: 10.4095/223767. Geological Survey of Canada, Open File 5529. [154]

Data and map coding provided by Macrostrat.org, used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License

References