Platt Prospect, Dundas mineral field, Zeehan District, Tasmania, Australia

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A small underground silver-lead mine, presently worked for specimen minerals, especially crocoite and pyromorphite.
This property is situated at the eastern boundary of the West Comet and south-west of the Comet mine, on the north slopes of Kosminsky Hill, about 3.5 km from Dundas. It was probably originally on the Kosminsky lease, but in 1925 it was held under prospector’s license by Charles Platt. It is probably the deposit described as the "crocoite lode" by Montgomery (1890). The lode was reopened by Mike Phelan and Joe Pringle in the 1970s, and was operated by Peter Olubas and Bruce Stark from the 1990s to ~2002, and solely by Bruce Stark since.
There were two lodes striking NNE, 70 m apart and up to 28 m wide in a fault zone near a contact between serpentinite and Cambrian shales. The sulphide ores consisted mostly of galena, sphalerite and jamesonite, occurring in veins up to 1.3 m wide.
Weathered parts of the lodes contained crocoite, pyromorphite, mimetite and cerussite in ferro-manganese gossan and quartz. One lode contains a fair proportion of crocoite and some bindheimite, rich in silver. Well crystallised pyrolusite and chalcophanite are also present in the gossan. In recent years, small-scale specimen mining has produced attractive crocoite and pyromorphite associations (Fig. 24), and good crystalline pyrolusite (Fig. 25) rarely associated with crocoite, plus minor cerussite. Specimens typically exhibit small sharply terminated orange-red crocoite crystals on dark green pyromorphite, with a soft yellow-brown gossan or vein quartz matrix.

Mineral List

Cerussite Chalcophanite Crocoite Galena

Goethite Jamesonite 'Limonite' Mimetite

Oxyplumboroméite Pyrolusite Pyromorphite Quartz

Sphalerite 'Wad'

14 entries listed. 12 valid minerals.

References