Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):	29° 42' 54'' South , 121° 6' 9'' East
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):	-29.71523,121.10254
GeoHash:	G#: qdwngy80j
Locality type:	Mine
Köppen climate type:	BWh : Hot deserts climate

There is gold showing freely at the Blowfly mine, but no-one ever worked out how to get it out of the stone through the battery process.

The original prospectors could not be located. The first information found was 1910, stating the mine had been idle for some time, but taken up by Manton and Newson (surnames). The mine had been re-named the Alathea, probably because a blow fly is a despised creature, and not in keeping with the grandeur of a gold mine.

A five head mill was erected, and stone taken out of the Hanging Wall showing gold freely, but little of it came out in the amalgam. Manton and Newson abandoned the lease, leaving employee wages unpaid.

The Dreadnought company acquired the lease, then found the battery and machinery was owned by someone else, and had been removed. As a result they abandoned the lease with no work done.

In 1914, E. Joyce of Kalgoorlie took up the lease. He opened up a lens of stone 15 feet long, and 5 feet wide at the 90 foot level. Twelve tonnes was broken out showing free gold. After sending it through the battery only 2.5 ounces was obtained. A small parcel of ore was sent to Perth for analysis, but the outcome is unknown.

The Blowfly is approximately five kilometres south-east of Menzies. To reach take the gravel road east from the centre of Menzies, then the right fork. The road winds its way through low hills past the True Blue and Maranoa Gold Mines, then narrows into a track heading due south-east to the mine. A small area of mullock and a couple of shafts its all that can be hoped for. A track just before the mine heads south-east then south to the Springfield and then Emu mines. This route passes through the Menzies borefield and access is not allowed.

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: 828558

metapelitic and metapsammitic rocks 74439 Age: Archean (2500 - 4000 Ma) Description: Metamorphosed sandstone, shale, siltstone, conglomerate, volcaniclastics; fuchsite-quartz rock; schist and metapsammite; quartzite, quartz-aluminosilicate rock, phyllite, slate, chert Comments: metasedimentary siliciclastic; sedimentary siliciclastic; synthesis of multiple published descriptions Lithology: Metasedimentary siliciclastic; sedimentary siliciclastic 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]

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

References