Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):	27° 56' 22'' South , 121° 14' 36'' East
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):	-27.93950,121.24341
GeoHash:	G#: qen1ncyb8
Locality type:	Mine
Köppen climate type:	BWh : Hot deserts climate

The British King Gold Mine, and its neighbouring leases British King West and British King East are two kilometres west south-west of the Melrose station homestead, and 200 metres north of the Darlot-Weebo Road.

Little appears to remain at the site, although any old shafts would need an on the ground inspection. The tailing sands from the battery were re-processed at least three times over the years, and while some remnants remain, it is minor considering the level of mining over one hundred years ago.

The original prospectors were Sutton and Kerr (surnames) from Cue, who sold the lease in 1896 to the London and Western Australian Exploration Company. They worked the mine until 1899.

In 1900, all three leases were taken over by the Fingall Reef Extended Company from Day Dawn. This was a large operation employing seventy men. A ten head battery was transferred from the Menzies United mine, later expanded to twenty stamps. The mine was being managed by Bewick Moreing and Co, and the leases were abandoned in 1903, it is said due to the high managerial costs imposed by this company.

The sands were left untreated, but shortly after a Mr. Rankin processed the sands for a 2500 pound profit. There was 9000 tonnes of sands available, and Rankin employed four men, with 7 x 30 tonne cyanide tanks for the task.

The battery was transferred to the Vivien mine at Lawlers. The sands were re-processed again in 1915 by Dawson and Murie (surnames).

The mine at this point had only been worked to the 160 foot level, with
12 248 tonnes of ore extracted for 8850 ounces of gold. Bissett (surname) and the Metzke brothers took up the lease in 1907, and were active with intermittent mining until 1918. J. Anderson took out a crushing in 1919. A Perth syndicate re-pegged the lease in 1920.

Wesley Moore treated the battery sands again in 1949.

Commodity List

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

Mineral List

1 valid mineral.

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

Quaternary 0 - 2.588 Ma ID: 917228

colluvium 38491 Age: Pleistocene (0 - 2.588 Ma) Description: Colluvium and/or residual deposits, sheetwash, talus, scree; boulder, gravel, sand; may include minor alluvial or sand plain deposits, local calcrete and reworked laterite Comments: regolith; synthesis of multiple published descriptions Lithology: Regolith 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: 3187918

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