Edinboro Castle Gold Mine, Mount Weld Station, Laverton Shire, Western Australia, Australia
Latitude & Longitude (WGS84): | 28° 56' 49'' South , 122° 34' 35'' East |
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Latitude & Longitude (decimal): | -28.94716,122.57641 |
GeoHash: | G#: qdz5m636t |
Locality type: | Mine |
Köppen climate type: | BWh : Hot deserts climate |
The spelling is correct, at least for this gold mine, although possibly not for the Scottish castle.
This mine started with great promise, and appears to have closed prematurely. It was pegged mid 1895, for the Murchison Prospecting Syndicate, making it one of the first leases in the Mount Weld area. The syndicate ran out of funds after six months and abandoned the lease.
The manager of the syndicate was M.S. Hack, and with his brother Wilton Hack took over. An eight head battery and 4 x 25 tonne cyanide vats were immediately erected. The lode is said to contain a large number of leaders rich in gold, believed to be from a larger reef deeper down, although it is unclear if this was ever proven.
By December 1901 the mine had produced 870 tonnes of ore for 1741 ounces of gold. There were six shafts at this stage, with the main shaft (No. 6) down to 125 feet.
March 1902, the mine closed. 50 tonnes were crushed in 1907 but by whom is not mentioned. The battery was removed to the Sunrise Gold Mine elsewhere in the district in 1908. It was possibly the haunt of prospectors thereafter, but no information was found.
The mine can be found by travelling south along the Merolia Road from Burtville for approximately 30 kilometres. The road eventually turns from heading south to south-west, and over the next 5 kilometres becomes bendy, and crosses a creek. Just after a particularly sharp bend is a faint un-marked track heading north. After a few hundred metres the track passes through the middle of about twelve closely spaced shafts. Scattered shafts are found for a few hundred metres in a south-west direction, including also a square battery sand pile next to the former battery site, and much disturbed ground.
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
Archean 2500 - 4000 Ma ID: 902727 | mafic extrusive rocks 74248 Age: Archean (2500 - 4000 Ma) Description: Basalt, high-Mg basalt, minor mafic intrusive rocks; some andesite; agglomerate; mafic schist; amphibolite; dolerite; komatiitic basalt; carbonated basalt; basaltic andesite; mafic rock interleaved with minor granitic rock Comments: igneous mafic volcanic; igneous mafic intrusive; synthesis of multiple published descriptions Lithology: Igneous mafic volcanic; igneous mafic intrusive 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: 3187518 | 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] |
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