Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):	30° 44' 10'' South , 121° 40' 59'' East
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):	-30.73637,121.68331
GeoHash:	G#: qdw90ux5d
Locality type:	Mine
Köppen climate type:	BSh : Hot semi-arid (steppe) climate

The Mount Alexander Gold Mine was in the centre of the Balagundi Goldfield. From 1895 to 1899 it was owned by a small Adelaide syndicate, and worked by John Stevenson. 24 acres.

There are two main lodes running north north-west to south south-east, both gold bearing. Work was largely confined to the eastern lode where two shafts had been sunk on decomposed slate and quartz containing gold. A rich shoot of gold was found in the kaolin, with a stockwork of quartz veins. The bulk of the lode is pure white kaolin. Shafts and a pit had been dug.

Alluvial gold was found in a gully close by, which held some rich patches. The western lode is quartz and ironstone, intermixed with slate. There was also a large quartz and kaolin formation at right angles to the lode, from which fine gold could be washed from.

The coarse gold was found as pieces with spikes and serrated edges 1 inch to a quarter inch long, and very bright. They would appear to have made handsome specimens in the collector market, which largely did not exist at the time, and they are believed to have all gone through the battery.

By 1899, prospectors McCullogh and Diskton (surnames) have taken over, re-naming the lease Mount Bellew. They are sinking new shafts and stoping ore. They also had a large interest in the lease to the south, and had purchased the local hotel.

The alluvial gully had been the focus of some of the work on the lease, with 600 ounces obtained in a few weeks. Further down the gully, the source described a mysterious mineral, being soft grey material that when dry has a bright metallic lustre like burnished silver. Nodules of ironstone and quartz are occasionally found in it, but no gold. It has a silky feel, and very fine, stating it covers every part of the miner's body so he feels oiled from head to toe. Panning leaves a tail of white matter behind. The writer suggests graphite, but is unconfirmed.

Commodity List

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

Mineral List

3 valid minerals.

Rock Types Recorded

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: 842789

undivided sedimentary and volcanic rocks 74481 Age: Archean (2500 - 4000 Ma) Description: Undivided sedimentary (non-volcanic) and felsic volcanic rocks Comments: sedimentary; igneous volcanic; synthesis of multiple published descriptions Lithology: Sedimentary; igneous 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: 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