A Broken Hill Icon, The Life and Mineral Collection of Sir Maurice Mawby
By Peter Andersen
P.O. Box 2418
Mildura
Victoria 3502
Australia

Email: pjandersen50@hotmail.com



INTRODUCTION

The most famous person to be born and bred in the outback Australian town of Broken Hill, New South Wales, would have to be Sir Maurice Mawby Kb, C.B.E., DSc (Hon) DA (Hon). As far as mineral collectors go the English had their Sir Arthur Russell, The Americans had their Washington Roebling and we here in Australia had Sir Maurice Alan Edgar Mawby. Mawby is an Australian who managed to start at the bottom and work his way to the top of corporate business as his final corporate position was as Chairman of Australia’s second largest mining company and in the process of this rise he never forgot where his roots were. Professor Geoffrey Blainey best summed up the type of person Sir Maurice Mawby was in the dedication he wrote at the start of the 1982 edition of the Minerals of Broken Hill book. “He saw heaven in a wildflower….when choosing a coat of arms (after his Knighthood) he selected the red flower of the Sturt Desert Pea, a Mallee fowl and a wooden Cornish poppet head. For he was proud to be a Cousin Jack, and a mining man” (Blainey, 1982).

It is certainly fitting that a new mineral found in the oxidised zone of the main Broken Hill lode was named mawbyite by Dr. Alan Pring. This name was given in recognition of the contribution made to mineralogy by the former chairman of CRA Ltd., Sir Maurice Mawby (1904-1977), who was himself once a resident of Broken Hill, having been born and brought up in that town and started his employment by working in the mines. Sir Maurice Mawby was a very keen mineral collector himself as he has stated in the editorial he wrote for the very first issue of the Australian Mineralogist “I became fascinated with the wide range of minerals occurring in the Broken Hill lode” (Mawby, 1975). In fact whilst Sir Maurice Mawby was chairman of the giant mining company CRA Ltd. He encouraged the miners of Broken Hill’s Zinc Corporation Mine to save the beautiful specimens that they encountered during mining operations otherwise, as he said, “they will only be ground up for very little return”.

Mawbyite was the first of three new mineral species to be identified as occurring in the Kintore Open Cut. It was found in a zone only a few metres across in no. 2 lens about 50 metres below the surface and it is certainly fitting that this new mineral was named in 1989 after such a Broken Hill icon as Sir Maurice Mawby. Mawbyite formed attractive orange red to deep brownish red crystals on fractures and cavities in the quartz-spessartine lode rocks. These mawbyite crystals showed a variety of habits with the most common being a ‘dogtooth’ form with crystals up to 0.2 millimetres high. Prismatic crystals and Vshaped twins are also common forms of this mineral and spongy aggregates as well as compact crusts have also been collected. (See Figure) Mawbyite usually occurred on a brownish or greenish yellow crust of a beaudantite-segnitite mineral and associated species include adamite, balyldonite, conichalcite, mimetite, olivenite and pharmacosiderite. Mawbyite has also been found to occur in the Block 14 Open Cut as well as the Author has a number of specimens of this mineral in his collection from this locality that were collected before the Block 14 Open Cut ore was dumped at the Pinnacles Mine for treatment. There are two co types of mawbyite; one is in the mineral collection of the Museum Victoria (M39178) and the other one is in the mineral collection of the South Australian Museum (G16066).





SIR MAURICE MAWBY (1904-1977) THE MAN AND MINERAL COLLECTOR

On the 31st of August in 1904 a baby was born in Broken Hill Hospital that was to have a very large impact on this outback western New South Wales town of Broken Hill. This baby was named Maurice Alan Edgar by his parents, Charles and Alice Mawby, and he grew up in this mining town and attended the North Broken Hill Primary School and Broken Hill High School for his education. Maurice was the second born of three sons and his parents had moved from the South Australian mining town of Burra to Broken Hill, where Charles Mawby owned and operated a grocer’s shop. His older brother, Victor, had died in infancy before Maurice was born so he grew up with only his younger brother, Jack, who still lives in Broken Hill.

As a boy and young man Maurice would cycle to the outskirts of the town of Broken Hill where he spent his time shooting rabbits (bunnies were always plentiful in the Australian bush), collecting minerals, identifying and preserving botanical specimens and observing the fauna of the region. Young Maurice became an ardent naturalist, an interest he was to maintain all his life. Everything within the earth, growing out of it and living from it remained a passionate interest throughout his life. Mawby’s knowledge of botany was impressive as was his knowledge of minerals. He could name practically every species of eucalypt and he was also a member of the Ornithological and Field Naturalists Societies.

As a school student Maurice was not really outstanding as his school reports showed that he had an aptitude for mathematics, economics and chemistry; three subjects that would stand him in good stead in later life. In fact Maurice topped his senior class in chemistry thus showing his aptitude for later work as an assayer. Having spent his formative years in a mining town Maurice decided that he wanted to have a career in the mining field so he attended the local Broken Hill Technological College on a leaving scholarship. Mawby was no dummy and with his work ethos and after several years of study managed to gain diplomas, with honours, in geology and a credit in metallurgy from the Broken Hill Technical College. The former carried with it the bronze medal of the Sydney Technical College, the first of many formal recognitions that Maurice Mawby would eventually receive throughout his lifetime. Several years after he had obtained these two diplomas young Maurice Mawby sat for the New South Wales state examination for the Mine Managers Certificate and his result in this examination was that he ended up securing first place.

Like a lot of the other residents of Broken Hill, Maurice Mawby spent a lot of his free time wandering around the region looking for mineral deposits. Whilst still a student at the Broken Hill technical College he met a kindrid sole in George R. Fisher (later, like Maurice, to be Knighted for his services to the mining industry-see Figure) who had come to Broken Hill in 1926 to gain underground experience in the Broken Hill mines and the two became lifelong friends. Together they wandered around Broken Hill and even further a field looking for mineral deposits and just spending time in the bush. They ranged as far north as Tibooburra and as far west as Mount Gunson near the Pernatty Lagoon in South Australia. They both thought that they would make their fortunes with mining gold at Tibooburra and copper at Mount Gunson. In fact they held the leases on the Mount Gunson copper deposit until wartime requirements necessitated a transfer of these leases to another company. This copper deposit has produced a number of superb well crystallised minerals such as atacamite, bornite, chalcocite, sphalerite, wittichenite, wulfenite, etc. when it was finally commercially operated as a source of copper in the 1980’s. Although they were not successful with these two ventures they did quite all right with the mining of a substantial tonnage of sillimanite from a sillimanite quarry in Thackaringa (obviously named Mawby and Fisher’s Quarry) which produced a number of mineral specimens including corundum and diaspore and with the production of amblygonite from the pegmatites of Euriowie. In the Mawby mineral collection there were a number of specimens which included amblygonite, beryl, cassiterite, heterosite, lazulite, svanbergite and tourmaline from his “Euriowie Days” that were registered into the mineral collection of the national museum of Victoria. These two ventures enabled Maurice Mawby to collect a number of minerals from these operations, one which would prove be svanbergite, a species not previously identified from any Australian locality.

In 1929 Maurice Mawby became himself a part time lecturer in geology and metallurgy at the Broken Hill Technological College, a position he was to maintain for the next eight years. It is interesting to note that Maurice was himself attending evening courses at this college when he became a part time lecturer so he would give a lecture himself and then go and attend his own mining engineering lectures as a student. When Maurice relinquished this position he 1937 as a result of him not being able to devote sufficient time to this position he became a member of the Advisory Committee to this college and this was a position he was to maintain until he left the district in 1945. Sir Maurice Mawby was very proud of the fact that such a small institution as the Broken Hill Technological College managed to produce so many mine managers and senior technicians for not only the local Broken Hill mines but also for other mining fields in Australia and abroad.

After he had finished his secondary education at the age of 16 young Mawby’s first full time position was as a seedling grower in a local nursery at the grand rate of 10 shillings a week. In 1921 when the New South Wales Government set up the Technical Health Commission to look into causes of industrial diseases caused by heavy metal contamination Maurice Mawby became a laboratory assistant to analyse lead in human organs under Professor H.G. Chapman. Mawby’s next position was as an assayer with the Junction North Mine which he obtained in 1922 at 18 years of age. Not only did this company operate a mine on the main Broken Hill lode as it held block 40, but it also operated the smaller Pinnacles, White Leads, Mayflower and Allendale mines.

In this job his prowess as a mineralogist was about to become apparent and having grown up in a town whose main employment was with dealing with minerals, even though it was to crush and process them for their metal values, it was not unexpected that Maurice Mawby developed a life long passion for collecting mineral specimens himself. An advantage that Maurice had in his position as assayer was that previously he had been employed as a part time laboratory assistant to a New South Wales Technical Health Commission that was enquiring into industrial diseases at Broken Hill. It was in this laboratory assistant’s position that Mawby had developed relatively simple techniques for the rapid chemical determination of lead, silica and other harmful components regularly encountered by the miners, smeltermen and Broken Hill residents that he was then able to apply in his assaying position with the Junction North Mine.

Mawby’s duties with the Junction North Mine were quite diverse; he operated a mill for treating crude ore, he ran a flotation plant for treating sulphide slimes and he treated a furnace product that was the reformed sulphide from the reduced wastes of the oxidised slimes. Later on he was also in charge of the concentrator at the Pinnacles mine which treated five tons of ore an hour by tabling and flotation to produce a high grade silver-lead concentrate. At the age of 20 Maurice Mawby was a metallurgist in charge of some 80 men, thus showing at an early age his future potential as a leader in the mining industry. Mind you most of this was accomplished before he had even acquired his diploma in metallurgy from the Broken Hill Technological College.

As an Assayer with the Junction North Mine it was up to Mawby to analyse not only the mill feed and products but also individual minerals as well. These analytical skills was soon applied to minerals that Mawby encountered in his various jobs that he held throughout his mining career and he personally collected, analysed and identified the following minerals: alabandite, apophyllite, bustamite, coronadite, inesite, palygorskite, pyroxmangite, ‘sturtite’ and tetrahedrite from the main Broken Hill lode and antimony, augelite, corundum, jarosite, mangancolumbite, meneghinite, microlite and purpurite from deposits around the town of Broken Hill for the first time (Mawby, 1975).

After the Junction North Mine ceased operations because it could not meet the compensation requirements recommended by the Chapman Commission findings Maurice had his sights set on working in a larger organisation. Maurice Mawby’s next appointed position in Broken Hill was in 1928 as a timberman with the Zinc Corporation Mine at the princely sum of 4 pounds seven and six shillings per week and upon reporting for duty on the 12th March, Mawby was made instead a surveyor’s assistant on a ventilation survey. This was the start of a long and fruit-full relationship with the Zinc Corporation and its parent company, Conzinc Riotinto of Australia Limited (CRA), that would take Maurice Mawby right to the top of the corporate ladder and obtain for him an English Knighthood, the only person ever born in Broken Hill to achieve this honour. As Maurice Mawby became more involved with the mining company that he worked for he also started to participate in verbal exchanges and correspondence with great mineralogists of the early part of the 20th century. These included such luminaries as George Card, George Smith, Thomas Hodge-Smith, and Dr. E. S. Simpson here in Australia and Foshag, Schaller and Mason at the Smithsonian; Berman Frondel and Palache at Harvard and Ramdohr of Heidleberg. His assistance in preserving the heritage of Broken Hill minerals by assembling his own collection as well as providing specimens for other collections and analysis is recognised time and time again in many publications. Without his initial work and encouragement many papers that were written by others might never have eventuated at all.

Whilst communicating with these distinguished scientists and other mineralogists Maurice Mawby, by now a very keen mineral collector himself, did not lose touch with the ordinary mineral collectors, particularly those in his old home town of Broken Hill. These mineral collectors in Broken Hill that Maurice Mawby encouraged to preserve the Broken Hill minerals that they came across included the brothers Arthur “Flossie” and Lionel Campbell, Charlie Hocking, Geoff Lithgow and Ron Supple. Whilst this was going on Maurice Mawby did not neglect his own mineral collection. He was adding specimens to his own collection by collecting them personally whenever he got a chance from the main Broken Hill mines and localities within a 100 kilometres of the Broken Hill township. Mawby also obtained specimens from other sources such as obtaining them from any miners that came up with something unusual that he liked. In fact an unusual and quite ugly specimen containing stromeyerite, jalpaite and mckinstryite that was in the Mawby mineral collection at the time of death had been purchased by Maurice Mawby from a Mr Cornish, who was the Underground Manager of the Block 14 Mine during the 1920’s.

Mawby particularly developed a close relationship with that other Broken Hill luminary and well known mineral collector, Arthur “Floss” Campbell and the extent of this relationship was expressed by Mawby in the tribute to Campbell he wrote in the Barrier Daily Truth of January 28th , 1964 and I quote:

“The passing of “Floss Campbell” removes one of the best known residents of Broken Hill. Few men had a better first hand knowledge of the whole of the West Darling area and of the occurrences in this area of mineral specimens and anthropological relics of the aboriginal era.

He had a meritorious industrial career in union circles, which led to his appointment as check inspector.

He brought to the responsibilities of this position a sense of conviction and high principle which developed a high respect among the staffs of the mining companies in Broken Hill.

Few residents have exhibited such a convincing love of the whole district.

Seizing every opportunity to be out in the bush around Broken Hill, he spent much of his time collecting minerals and Aboriginal relics. No one knew more of the best natural places in the district where these could be found.

I had, over some years, an almost daily association with him because of love of minerals and I have never known anyone with a greater skill of recognizing minerals and rocks. Had he the advantage of formal studies in these subjects, he would have been world class. Even so, it is due to him that many new species were recognized and classified in the district and is largely due to his industry and unflagging interest that many of these specimens are now in geological museums around the world.

We were lifelong friends. Although he was born at Torrowangee, we went through school days together at the North (Primary) School and grew up sharing many a duck shoot in the bush.

Flossy Campbell’s quality I remember best was a kind of obstinacy. Not the kind of obstinacy which in some people becomes unattractive, but rather an obstinacy compounded of high dedication to his personal beliefs, a high sense of principle and conviction that there was no room for compromise on matters of integrity. These high personal qualities were more than exemplified in the extraordinary way in which he was able to survive the severe handicap of ill health over the last 20 years of his life.

A lot of us have lost not only a very respected friend but someone whose example and courage influenced us more than we probably know” (Mawby, 1964).

Having the specimen resources of the main Broken Hill lode behind him Maurice Mawby also conducted a number of mineral exchanges with both institutions and private collectors throughout Australia and the world. The first mineral exchange between Maurice Mawby and the Australian Museum’s department of mineralogy occurred in 1929 and it was during this first exchange that Mawby sent to Thomas Hodge-Smith, who at that time was senior curator of the Australian Museum’s mineral collection, specimens of a black friable mineral from the Zinc Corporation Mine that Mawby himself had done a part analysis. Hodge-Smith was to describe this mineral as a new species and he named it sturtite after the famed inland Australian explorer, Charles Sturt. Unfortunately later studies of this black amorphous hydrated silicate of iron, manganese, calcium and magnesium proved it to be a mixture of hisingerite and neotocite. Other Broken Hill specimens that Maurice Mawby sent to the Australian Museum included specimens of the colourless to pale grey crystals of stolzite collected from the boundary of the South and Zinc Corporation mines and fluorapohyllite crystals from the 1702 foot level of the Zinc Corporation mine. Thomas Hodge-Smith described and published descriptions of these specimens that he had received from Maurice Mawby. One of the specimens received by Maurice Mawby in exchange for his from the Australian Museum was a small acanthite from the A.B.H. Consols mine. This Australian Museum specimen (D30372) was obtained by the Australian Museum from a Mrs S Mitchell and is now registered in the Museum Victoria’s mineral collection as part of the Sir Maurice Mawby collection (M35655).

Mawby also completed a number of exchanges with George W. Card, the curator of the Geological and Mining Museum located in George Street near the Sydney Rocks district. One of the specimens that Mawby was after from Card was a specimen of Broken Hill dyscrasite. Mr Card could not full fill this request because as he wrote “I see I am under promise to procure a piece of dyscrasite, if possible: the mineral is extremely scarce; we lost practically all ours by burglary some 20 years ago.” (These would have been stolen for their silver value and not their specimen value unfortunately.) Mr Card identified some specimens for Mawby, one of which was a specimen of jarosite from the Great Western Mine.

As far as mineral identifications go Maurice Mawby quoted in Mawby memo 273 (now preserved in the Museum Victoria’s Mawby file) “that unless they are determined when available any record of them is lost for all time”. Maurice Mawby was in communication with Kenneth K. Landes of the University of Kanas and Mawby send Landes a suite of Euriowie specimens for identification since Landes was interested in pegmatites. The results that Landes found have been included as a historical document. In 1939 Mawby also sent specimens to Dr W. T. Schaller of the U.S. Geological Survey who identified the unknown mineral that Mawby sent as being pyrosmalite and in his reply Mawby wrote: “The identification of pyrosmalite adds another mineral to the local list…..there is little doubt that an error was made in the analysis of the pink mineral, and your explanation seems quite feasible. It is a pity that greater care was not taken by the Museum Staff, as such work is both misleading and annoying.”

Maurice Mawby also conducted a number of mineral exchanges with collectors living overseas. One of these collectors was Charles Marble of Ridlonville, Maine, U.S.A. who Sir Maurice started exchanging mineral specimens with as early as 1927 and the last exchange was in 1932. It was probably from Charles marble that Sir Maurice Mawby obtained the suite of specimens from the Maine pegmatites that were eventually registered into the mineral collection of the Museum Victoria. In fact the author had the experience of conducting a number of mineral exchanges in the 1980’s with a collector living in California by the name of Donald Fraser who himself had conducted mineral exchanges with Maurice Mawby back in the 1930’s. At this time Donald was living in North Carolina and he sent as his exchange to Maurice Mawby a fine suite of specimens from the Spruce Pine Mine that was mentioned by Birch in his 1977 description of the Sir Maurice Mawby mineral collection. A letter sent by Mawby to Fraser discussing mineral exchanges was sent by Fraser to the author in the 1980’s and is reproduced here. Another American mineral collector that Mawby exchanged with in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s was a Earnest A. Maynard of Jamaica, New York. Mawby obtained his New Jersey trap rock specimens from this collector. By writing to L.H. Bauer of the New Jersey Zinc Company in 1940, Maurice Mawby obtained a suite of specimens from the Franklin Mine as a gratis donation by the New Jersey Zinc Company (see the three documents relating to this). Other exchanges were conducted with E. Mitchell Gunnell of Denver, Colorado and Ward’s Natural Science Establishment through R.C. Vance who was then head of this company in 1935 when contact was made.

Now that Mawby had joined, in March of 1928, the Zinc Corporation Mine as a surveyor’s assistant under the supervision of his friend, George R. Fisher, who was the then Chief Surveyor of that mine, then, as part of his duties, Mawby took part in an investigation of the ore reserves of the Lake George Mine at Captain’s Flat, New South Wales which at that time was under water. This survey took some six months and after it was completed Mawby then worked on the metallurgical treatment of the ore from this mine at the Minerals Separation Company in Melbourne. The aim of this investigation was to produce separate concentrates of lead, iron and zinc by flotation methods.

Upon his return to the Zinc Corporation Mine in Broken Hill after the completion of this assignment Mawby was promoted to the position of junior surveyor. His duties included surveying the drives and preparing plans of the mine; calculating contract rates; designing underground timbering, ore chutes and rail layouts; and conducting ventilation surveys all of which would serve Mawby well in his move up the CRA corporate ladder.

In 1929, at the age of 25, Maurice Mawby married a local Broken Hill girl by the name of Lena White. The wedding vows between Maurice Mawby and his new bride, Lena, took place in the Sulphide Street Methodist Church on the 19th March 1929. Lena’s family had been friendly with the Mawbys for many years as both families had moved from the Burra district to Broken Hill and the two families were also in the retailing business as well. This young married couple lived at 475 Wyman Street in Broken Hill and had only one child, Colin, who was born in 1932. Colin, like any son, was more than happy to join his father on his prospecting and shooting expeditions around the Broken Hill environs and a lasting friendship was to be established between Colin and his father. Maurice and Lena were to reap their benefit in the time that they had been able to spend on their child as their values were passed on to Colin and both Maurice and Lena ended up deriving enormous pleasure from watching the development of Colin’s 5 children as they in turn grew up. In 1945 the Mawby family of three moved to Melbourne and in 1946 moved into their home in Mont Albert Road, Canterbury, which is an eastern inner suburb of Melbourne. In fact the senior author used to cycle past the Mawby residence on his way to his secondary school every day he attended this school from February of 1966 until December of 1971, as it was also located in Mont Albert Road.

In 1935 Mawby moved out of the surveying side of mine work to become the assistant mill foreman in the Zinc Corporation’s lead-zinc processing plant at Broken Hill. Mawby’s most significant contribution to Broken Hill’s metallurgical innovation was to help design and build an all flotation plant to replace the old gravity flotation plant that used a complicated system of jigs and tables followed by flotation. All the other mining companies of Broken Hill had been defeated by the challenge of all-flotation until the breakthrough was found in the work that Mawby was involved in at the Zinc Corporation Mine. Mawby described the evolution of the all-flotation processes at the Zinc Corporation Mine in a thesis for which he was awarded the Fellowship of the Sydney Technical College in 1937 and a paper describing it was also published in the Proceedings of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy.

It was in 1935 that Maurice Mawby first met William Sydney Robinson (1876- 1963 see Figure), who was the dynamic mining industry figure of the 1930’s-1940’s, and a firm friendship was established. Robinson was the Melbourne based managing director of the Zinc Corporation and the two had met as a result of Robinson coming to Broken Hill on a fact finding mission. Mawby actually said “W.S. Robinson was one of the very, very great Australians, a man of real humanity, real appreciation of the role of the working man in industry, and I always regarded myself as being probably more influenced by him than any other man”. With the support of Robinson, Mawby sought in the late 1930’s to establish “the green belt” and was instrumental in the employment of Albert Morris to regenerate flora and fauna in the arid dusty country surrounding the Zinc Corporation Mine and its associated line of lode offshoot, the New Broken Hill Consolidated Mine (see Figures ).Other mines and even the Broken Hill City Council were soon to follow this example of replanting the native vegetation around their leases and the town of Broken Hill.

Mawby temporarily left the Zinc Corporation Mine in 1940 to become the technical secretary of the Copper and Bauxite Committee that was set up by the Commonwealth Government to investigate ways of obtaining more copper and aluminium for the war effort. In this role Maurice Mawby visited many mines and smelters throughout the length and breadth of Australia and even overseas. One of the mines that Mawby visited during this time was the Scheelite Mine at Grassey, King Island, Tasmania, which had a world class deposit of tungsten- vital for a capping on anti tank ordnance. It was during this visit to King island that Maurice Mawby collected the crystallised scheelite specimen illustrated in Figure .

In 1944 Mawby left the Copper and Bauxite Committee to assume the manager’s position with the newly established Broken Hill mine that had the name of New Broken Hill Consolidated Mine. At the same time he was also the chief metallurgist for both this mine and the Zinc Corporation Mine. Mawby left the Zinc Corporation group in 1945 by accepting the appointment to the position of director of research and development with the company Broken Hill Associated Smelters Pty Ltd. This appointed resulted in Mawby having to move his family from Broken Hill to Melbourne, the city where he was to spend the rest of his life.

In 1946, at the urging of his friend W.S. Robinson, Mawby rejoined the Zinc Corporation as its director of exploration and research, a job that was after his own heart as Mawby could then go looking for mines. This position was offered to Mawby because Robinson realised very early that a company having but one mine would soon wither away if there was no future to be expected once the ore of that mine ran out. In his role as director of exploration and research Mawby was not looking for pissant mineral deposits but those of national significance in that they would catalyse the opening up of new regions of Australia. This assignment proved to be very rewarding to both Maurice Mawby and the Zinc Corporation as over the next twenty years world class deposits of bauxite, copper and iron were discovered and developed. This ensured that the company’s future was no longer dependent just on its mining the lead-silver-zinc minerals from its part of the Broken Hill lode.

There were some disappointments along the way. Mawby was instrumental in the early investigation and development of the Stradbroke Island beach sands deposits of ilmenite and zircon. In fact a subsidiary company, Titanium and Zirconium Industries Proprietary Limited, was formed in 1948 to mine and process these deposits but some of the non Australian directors of the Zinc Corporation were not convinced that there would be any use or future for these metals and so, in 1969, forced the company to dispose of this asset! Mawby was also involved for some time in oil and gas exploration as the Zinc Corporation combined in 1946 with two non Australian oil companies, D’Arcey Exploration Company Limited (later British Petroleum) and the Vacuum Oil Company (later Mobil Australia) to look for economic fields of oil and gas. The three companies set up a cover company, Frome-Broken Hill Company proprietary Limited, in 1947 to carry out this exploration and it was conducted throughout the south western corner of the Great Artesian Basin and later in the Otway Basin of Victoria. These exploration programs resulted in a number of specimens of hydrocarbons being kept by Mawby and eventually they were registered into the mineral collection of the National Museum of Victoria as part of the Mawby Mineral Collection and they were M35727 crude oil from the Richmond No.1 Well, Richmond, New South Wales, M35717 crude oil from Port Campbell No. 4, 5874-5903 ft, Otway Basin, Victoria, M35721 Hydrocarbon from Flaxmans No.1, 10842 to 11528 ft, Otway Basin, Victoria, M35719 Hydrocarbon from Port Campbell No. 4, 5657-5663 ft, Otway Basin, Victoria, M35720 Hydrocarbon from Flaxmans No.1, 10842 to 11528 ft, Otway Basin, Victoria, M35723 Hydrocarbon from Sunny Bank No. 1, Roma District, Queensland, M35722 Hydrocarbon from Flaxmans No.1, 10842 to 11528 ft, Otway Basin, Victoria, M35726 Hydrocarbon said to be from Yardarino No. 3, Yardarino, Queensland, M35718 Hydrocarbon from Port Campbell No. 4, 5947-5970 ft, Otway Basin, Victoria and Hydrocarbon A.A.O. Combarngo Well No. 1, 5074-5109 ft, Combarngo, Queensland. It was one of Mawby’s major disappointments that, despite some early encouragement, no large viable commercial Australian oil and gas fields were actually found during this period of exploration. Unfortunately they were looking in the wrong places.

One important by product did result from this search for useable hydrocarbons and it came about because of memorandum that Mawby wrote and sent to all exploration geologists. This memorandum, which was written in June of 1953, stated: “Please issue instructions to all field geologists that, apart from the search for base metals, they should keep an eye open for possible deposits of other minerals, particularly bauxite and phosphate, which may occur in many places in the Northern Territory and possibly Cape York Peninsula….” It was the company’s oil exploration geologists looking for commercial oil and gas fields in the Cape York Penisula that found the very important bauxite deposits at Weipa.

Mawby always had a special identification with the Weipa bauxite deposit. Not only had he explicitly reminded his staff of the possibility of the occurrence of bauxite in northern Australia, but after the discovery he also supported and guided its development, stage by stage, into one of the world’s largest bauxite-alumina-aluminium enterprises. It was Mawby’s long range view that made disappointments, such as the lack of finding commercial quantities of oil and gas, easier to accept. An exploration program that did not come up with the expected goodies was not a waste of money, it was merely part of the cost of developing mineral resources.

One of Australia’s foremost geologists Haddon F. King (see figure), who was a close associate of Maurice Mawby from 1946 until his death in 1977 and was one of the Zinc Corporation’s senior geologists in the department that Mawby had put together, believed that he was very fortunate to belong to an organisation in which exploration was seen not merely as the key to growth and profit but also as a duty. As the Zinc Corporation’s director of exploration and research Mawby built up a world standard geological staff of 40 by 1960 from an absolute zero in 1946. It was during those years that CRA developed the activities, the skills, the investigational curiosity and the geological concepts that led to the company’s successes of the 1950’s and 1960’s. The leadership provided by Maurice Mawby was at the forefront of all of these successful projects.

Mawby’s move up the corporate ladder of big business started back in 1955 when he was appointed vice chairman of Consolidated Zinc Proprietary Limited (CZP), the Australian company that was now looking after the Zinc Corporation Mine and all its assets. Maurice Mawby was made a director of the British based parent company, Consolidated Zinc Corporation Limited (CZC) in 1956. In 1961, upon the death of the current chairman, L.B. Robinson who was the son of Mawby’s close friend, W.S. Robinson, Maurice Mawby became chairman of Consolidated Zinc Proprietary Limited.

In 1962 the parent company, Consolidated Zinc Corporation Limited merged with the very big London based company, RioTinto Company Limited, to form The Rio Tinto-Zinc Corporation Limited (RTZ) and Maurice Mawby became one of its directors. At the same time Conzinc Rio Tinto of Australia Limited (CRA) was formed by merging the large Consolidated Zinc Proprietary Limited Company with the smaller Rio Tinto Mining Company of Australia Limited whose main asset was a majority shareholding in the Mary Kathleen uranium deposit. As Mawby described it “CZP had lots of deposits, lots of work ahead, lots of development and limited funds, and they (Rio Tinto) had lots of money and no projects”. It was Mawby’s background in exploration and development that made him the ideal appointee to the chairmanship of this new and very large Australian company.

The mining projects that Mawby oversaw in his role as chairman of CRA included the finding, development and mining of such orbodies as the iron ore of Mount Tom price in western Australia, the copper ore of the Bouganville deposit in Papua New Guinea and the coal deposit of Blair Athol in Queensland. In fact no nation in the third world probably owes as much, to a single economic event as Papua New Guinea owes to the opening up of Bouganville Copper and this was one project that Maurice Mawby really pushed to a successful conclusion. Mawby had a sense of urgency, even impatience, and the unprecedented speed with which major projects were brought into production testifies to his drive and organising ability. From his early years in mining Mawby had been a good manager with a belief in delegation and sharing credit. He had the gift of being able to choose the right person for a particular job and once that person was chosen then Mawby provided encouragement without interference. Mawby did not suffer fools gladly and he was very impatient with accounts and administrative procedures and long erudite discussions; these were not his style. His principle back stop was his friend Arthur Rew who was the administrator and finance man of CRA. Rew had also spent many years in Broken Hill and also held the positions of general manager of CZP and was later managing director of CRA. Rew and Mawby working together formed a truly great team and this relationship lasted harmoniously for almost thirty years.

Throughout his life a number of awards and honours were awarded or bestowed upon Maurice Mawby. In 1955 Mawby was admitted to the degree of Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) of the New South Wales University of Technology (now the University of New South Wales) for his contributions to metallurgy and geology. Maurice Mawby received the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy’s Bronze Medal, in 1956 “in recognition of his contribution to exploration and to non ferrous metallurgy, and also of his continuous public services in many directions associated with mining and metallurgy”. This was the institute’s highest award and Mawby was delighted and proud that the presentation of this ward was made in Broken Hill during the 1956 annual conference by its president then who was A.R. West, himself a classmate of Mawby’s when they both attended the broken Hill technical College at the same time. Mawby’s contributions to the mining industry were recognised in 1959 when he was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (C.B.E.). Four years later he was created Knight Bachelor for “services to mining and industry”. When this knighthood was conferred upon him in 1963, the now Sir Maurice Mawby chose for his coat of arms the following: a wooden poppet-head, a mallee fowl, the Sturt desert pea flower and the motto of his old school, Broken Hill High, -palma non sine pulvere- which may be loosely translated as “no prize is won without effort”. The London based Institution of Mining and Metallurgy awarded two Gold Medals in 1963 and one of the recipients was Sir Maurice Mawby, the other was his good friend from his Broken Hill days and now Sir George Fisher. The American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers (AIME) elected Sir Maurice Mawby as an honorary member in 1964 “for his outstanding contributions to the world lead and zinc mining industry and for his able and constructive services in developing the raw material resources of Australia.” Mawby was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1969 and in 1970 was awarded the Kernot Memorial Medal of the University of Melbourne “in recognition of his distinguished engineering achievement in exploration research and development in the mining and metallurgical industry in and beyond the continent of Australia, and also of his interest in education and his concern for the preservation of the environment”. Not to be outdone the Victoria Institute of colleges, in a special ceremony in 1975 conferred upon Sir Maurice Mawby the degree of Doctor of Arts and Sciences (Honoris Causa) for “services to the development of the Mining Industry in Australia”. Sir Maurice Mawby was also a life member of the Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, a founding member of the Australia Mining Industry Council, a member of the Institution of Chemical Engineers (London)

Sir Maurice was very confident about the future of mining in Australia, and considered himself “the luckiest man in the world” to have found his true vocation. Mawby was also a long time member of the quite prestigious Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy having joined in 1923 as a student member and thus began an association that was to last more than half a century. Mawby, as a member of this institute held a number of positions of responsibility that included being a member of the council in 1948, vice president 1950-1952, president 1953-4 (see figure), vice president again from 1953-1963 and also once again its president in 1968.he did a great deal during his terms of office to motivate the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy and to set high standards. Two of Mawby’s presidential addresses, “The Torch we Hold” (delivered in 1954) and “The Standards we Inherit” (delivered in 1968) left an indelible mark on its members. When Sir Maurice Mawby received a certificate of honorary membership of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy in 1976 he said “summing it all up, if I had my life to live again, I would wish no other than that which I have had in the same localities with the same people”. Mawby was also proud to be the patron of the newly established Mineralogical Society of Mineralogy and it was at these meetings that the Author first met Sir Maurice. After his death in 1977 the Society instigated the Sir Maurice Mawby Memorial Lecture as an annual event and the inaugural lecture was delivered by the well known mineral collector and author, Dr Peter Bancroft, and his topic was the “World’s Finest Mineral and Crystals”.

In 1959 the Australian Mineral Industries Research Association Limited (AMIRA) was formed to back research for the mineral industry and Maurice Mawby was elected as its inaugural President. A spin off from this organisation was the Australian Mineral Development Laboratories (AMDEL) and Mawby was elected to its council. Funding for these two organisations was provided by the mining companies and individual states Mines departments on a voluntary basis and having Maurice Mawby pushing this particular barrow was certainly instrumental in how successful it was to be. Mawby’s personal approaches won guarantees of work or cash to the tune of $100000 per year for a minimum of five years. AMIRA’s first annual report in 1960 mentioned three projects that were geobiological research into ore genesis, non-destructive testing of mine hoisting ropes and the application of XRF spectrography to the analysis of ores. Because he was so successful in the role Maurice Mawby was persuaded to remain president of AMIRA for the next 13 years. The Mineral Industry Research Organisation in Great Britain and the Australian Engineering and Building Industries Research Association here in Australia both used AMIRA as their patterns when they were established.

Mawby was also a keen pastoralist and in 1956 he purchased 6 300 acres of virgin mallee scrub (hence the inclusion of the endangered Mallee Chook in his coat of arms) near Keith in South Australia for development as his grazing property- Noranda Station. There was no certainty that this venture would be successful but Mawby, along with his family, accepted the challenge with his characteristic enthusiasm and energy. This venture turned out, as was to be expected, well and a notable Aberdeen Angus Stud, a Murray Grey stud and a Merino stud was established. Mawby liked to visit his country retreat at least once a month as it provided him with the relaxation he needed away from high corporate business that he was involved in on a weekly basis. It also gave him an opportunity once again to develop a project from conception to a successful conclusion in that it became a financial success. In 1967 his son, Colin, purchased an adjoining property and is now running both together.

Other things that Mawby enjoyed doing was being directors of a number of other business companies that included Australian Titan Products Pty Ltd, Hamersley Iron Pty Ltd (he was chairman of this one as it was a subsidiary company of CRA), Interstate Oil Ltd, Kembla Coal and Coke Pty Ltd and the Australian Mines and Metals Association just to name a few of them. He was also a member of the Anthenaeum (Melbourne), Broken Hill, Melbourne and Commonwealth (Canberra) clubs. Mawby enjoyed playing competition tennis, swimming, shooting, motoring and most of all just being a family man and spending time with his wife Lena and son Colin. Sir Maurice Mawby was a perfectionist and his favourite saying, according to his son, Colin, was “if something is worth doing it’s worth doing well”.

People mattered to Sir Maurice Mawby and not just as producers for the company that he managed. He had wagged school during the big strike of 1909 and had seen first hand the baton charges and mounted police herding people in the streets of Broken Hill. Mawby understood the problems of the miners and the reasons for why the bitterness had persisted for so long. As a child Mawby had seen that conditions in Broken Hill were not good. The houses were built of mud and stone and water was scarce; Saturday’s bath had to serve mum, dad and the kids before the precious water was used to grow the vegies. When he had first entered management he consciously adopted the philosophy of his mentor, William.S. Robinson, that the prosperity of the mines was inextricably bound to the prosperity and well being of the miners. Mawby recognized that not only good working conditions and safety was important but so too were living conditions and leisure facilities. Whole families were essential for stability and permanence in remote areas such as Broken Hill, Bouganville, Mount Tom Price and Dampier, so the welfare of the workers wives and children was just as important as that of the men themselves. Housing was built to equal city standards, swimming pools and like amenities were built, fare subsidies were provided for secondary school students and seaside holidays were encouraged.

Two stories related to me by John Bosworth, who once worked in CRA’s finance department at their head office at 95 Collins Street illustrate that Sir Maurice Mawby was very sincere in his regard for the employees that worked for CRA. At Christmas time Sir Maurice Mawby and Arthur Rew would go through the entire CRA building to shake all the employees by the hand and thank them personally for the effort that they had put in throughout the year to make CRA the company that it was. This was a very sincere gesture by these two gentlemen and all the workers knew it. It impressed John no end that these two directors of CRA would be prepared to spend the time to do this. Just a short time before Sir Maurice Mawby died John was once in a lift with Sir Maurice Mawby on his way to his own office on the 21st floor and Sir Maurice was on his way to his 24th floor office and he overheard Sir Maurice speaking to one of the other employees in the lift. Sir Maurice was actually quite embarrassed because he had to ask the name of the worker that he was speaking to. Sir Maurice also spoke on “how concerned he (that is Sir Maurice) was becoming on the fact that the CRA organisation was getting too big and that he could no longer remember the names of all the employees that now worked in the CRA building!” This by a man in his mid 70’s mind you.

When Sir Maurice Mawby retired from the chairmanship of CRA in 1974 this company had become second only to BHP among Australian companies. Exploration was proceeding apace and there was momentum enough for an exciting future. At the time of Sir Maurice Mawby’s retirement the CRA company had 23 000 employees, its sales revenue was $833.5 million and its dividends to shareholders ($36.1 million) was less than a quarter of the money that was paid to governments in royalties and taxation ($166.9 million). Mawby’s pride was not in the size of this company but in the multiplicity of its contributions to the development of Australia. Sir Roderick Carnegie said “One of Sir Maurice’s greatest attributes was his ability to lead and to be well liked in the process. He generated enthusiasm in others in leading them towards common objectives, installing a team spirit in those whom he led.” Though he had risen dramatically from the lowly days of boyhood in Broken Hill, Sir Maurice Mawby had remained always an unassuming man.

Sir Maurice Mawby, Australia’s “grand old man of minerals” passed away on the 4th of August, 1977, after a brief illness at the age of 73.



THE MAWBY MINERAL COLLECTION

A large amount of information about this mineral collection has been taken from the article that Dr Bill Birch wrote in 1977 in the Broken Hill memorial issue of the Australian mineralogist that was dedicated to Sir Maurice Mawby just after his death in Melbourne. Only a few months prior to his passing Sir Maurice Mawby had overseen the transfer of his main mineral collection from his CRA offices and home in Mont Albert Road to the department of mineralogy of the then National Museum of Victoria. In 1999 CRA transferred to the Museum Victoria the ore and rock collection that Sir Maurice Mawby had put together throughout his working life and that the company had retained possession of after his death in 1977. In 1988, as a result of a large mineral exchange conducted with the National Museum of Victoria, the Author obtained the remainder of the Mawby mineral collection that had not been registered into the Museum’s mineral collection because it was mainly duplicates of specimens already present and space in the main mineral cabinets for the registration of duplicated specimens was now limited.

There were around a total of 1100 mineral specimens present by the time Sir Maurice Mawby had transferred all the mineral specimens that he had in his office and home to the department of mineralogy of the National Museum of Victoria in the years of 1976 and 1977. Of these 1100 hundred specimens 561 were eventually registered into the Museum’s mineral collection and the rest were disposed of by exchanges over the next ten years. Of the 561 registered specimens 160 were from the Broken Hill mines and outlying prospects and these specimens were represented by 70 species from a range of localities. A further 20 Mawby specimens have already made their way back into the mineral collection of the Museum Victoria as part of the Andersen donation made back in 1999. The Author expects that a few more will be added as well as a result of this article having been written and these specimens illustrated in it. This then is the description of this Mineral collection from a curator’s viewpoint with added comments made by the author on the basis of specimens from the Mawby mineral collection still in his possession.

“The decision by Sir Maurice Mawby to donate his mineral collection to the National Museum of Victoria ended a long period of speculation as to its final resting place. Over the years, it had acquired something of a mystical quality as the last of the major old Broken Hill collections still in private hands. While much of the collection was on display in glass cases in Sir Maurice’s office in Melbourne, there was as much, if not more, at his home in Mont Albert Road. The task of transferring the material to the museum began towards the end of 1976 and was completed in may, 1977, several months before Sir Maurice passed away.

The collection was an excellent acquisition for the Museum. It consists of approximately 1 100 specimens of which about 561 have been incorporated into the Museum’s reference collections (these 561 specimens consisted of 249 different species from 317 different locations). Sir Maurice would have been the first to admit that it is not primarily a display collection-there are only a few spectacular, well crystallised pieces-but it is first and foremost a species collection. Unfortunately, Sir Maurice’s other commitments prevented him from cataloguing the collection in full (Most of the Mawby specimens had been numbered with a black number on a yellow backing but there was no written catalogue with the collection so you could not cross reference a numbered specimen to check its locality whenever it was required. The author still has in his possession around 30 numbered Mawby specimens that have no locality details), while several moves in office locality had resulted in many specimens coming adrift from labels (it is interesting to note that the labels of the specimen in the Mawby mineral collection all had a stamp on them that said “Mawby mineral collection”. This stamp was applied to whatever original labels came into the mineral collection in association with their specimens and Sir Maurice then did not have to write another label himself). Nevertheless, Sir Maurice kept a great deal of information on specimens and their localities in his head and was usually able to attach an unfamiliar specimen to a satisfactory locality.

The Mawby collection was a great one to browse through, as it had a wide variety of species and localities represented. A tremendous amount of satisfaction was gained from the cleaning, checking and registration process. Naturally, the strongest feature is its Broken Hill specimens (there was registered into the Museum’s mineral collection 160 specimens of 70 species from 36 different localities in the Broken Hill district). These included Azurite (13), a variety of stolzite crystals (11), some excellent pyrosmalite specimens (including those specimens registered as manganpyrosmalite the total was 4), some splendid rhodochrosites from the Zinc Corporation (3), a wide range of pyromorphites (8), together with cerussites (4), smithsonites (12), anglesites (2), wulfenites (3), mimetites (5), and silver halides (5 chlorargyrite and 2 iodargyrite); (3 acanthite, bannisterite, 3 bustamite, capgaronnite, copper, 2 dyscrasite, 2 hedenbergite, ilvaite, inesite, lead, linarite,mangaogrunerite, 2 marshite, miersite, 4 perroudite, 3 raspite, 3 silver, 2 spessartine, 2 stibnite, stilbite, stromeyerite and tocornalite are just some of the other Broken Hill specimens in the Mawby collection that were registered into the national museum of Victoria’s mineral collection by Dr Bill Birch back in 1977). A few of these specimens are illustrated in the colour photographs.

In addition to minerals from within the lode horizon, Sir Maurice took a great deal of interest in the wide variety of minerals obtainable in the Broken Hill district. He worked for some time on the tin-bearing pegmatites at Euriowie, in particular the Trident and Lady Don Mines, and the collection contains some of the minerals recorded from this locality including amblygonite, beryl, apatite, morinite and lazulite. Other specimens from the broken Hill district include a very large beryl crystal (46 cm high and 25 cm wide), clinozoisite crystals, diaspore (and corundum) crystals from veins in Mawby and Fishers Sillimanite Quarry, staurolite, kyanite, manganocolumbite, etc.

As might be expected, the Broken Hill minerals were mainly collected personally and quite a number of these have an historical interest. These include what might be called the type specimens of “sturtite” (now believed to be a mixture of hisingerite and neotocite), the pyrosmalites, some of the stolzites and wulfenites and the rare, inadequately described mercury minerals coccinite and tocornalite (most of the specimens of these two minerals have proven to be the very rare mineral species capgaronnite (1) and perroudite (4)). Sir Maurice spoke of how it was possible at one time to collect handfuls of large pyrosmalite crystals and there was an unlimited supply of the greyish, nailhead stolzite crystals from the Zinc Corporation-Broken Hill South boundary pillar on the 525 ft level. Even so, few have survived, even in the Mawby collection.

One unique specimen (M33289) was purchased by Sir Maurice from a Mr Cornish, who was Underground Manager at the Block 14 Mine during the 1920’s. it is an ugly looking, rounded mass of dark blue-black powdery mineral impregnated with quartz grains and native silver crystals. X-ray examination reveals that the powdery mineral is mainly stromeyerite, the copper silver sulphide (AgCuS), but there are also traces of the chemically similar minerals jalpaite (Ag3CuS2) and McKinstryite ((Ag,Cu)2S) which had not been recorded previously from Broken Hill. This specimen probably came from the secondary enrichment zone, 2-300 feet below the outcrop, in the Block 13 or 14 Mines. Another specimen, this time from the Lady Don Mine at Euriowie, contains small yellowish crystals of the rare mineral svanbergite (SrAl3(PO4)(SO4)(OH)6 (M32897) which as far as I’m (that is Dr Bill Birch) aware has not been recorded in Australia before. In addition, a specimen from the Pinnacles Mine, south of Broken Hill, has a yellowish coating of greenockite (CdS) which was identified by Dr John McAndrew of C.S.I.R.O.

It is the existence of specimens such as these which gives the Mawby collection its character. It is a genuine mineral-lovers collection, in the sense that specimens were added to it not necessarily for their showiness, but for their intrinsic interest and uniqueness or their personal appeal. (The senior author can certainly vouch for this. In the remainder of the collection that he acquired there were specimens in it that Mawby had obtained as a result of exchanges conducted with the Australian Museum. These included a batch of small staurolite crystals from near Mount Isa and even some unusual bismuth minerals that were once in the George Smith mineral collections that the Australian Museum obtained early last century.)

Australian localities other than Broken Hill are not neglected. There are a large number of uranium minerals from the Rum Jungle (16 specimens in total were registered into the Museum Victoria’s mineral collection) and Alligator River (6 specimens in total were registered into the Museum Victoria’s mineral collection) in the Northern Territory and from deposits in Queensland (which include the Mary Kathleen Open cut with 2 being registered into the Museum Victoria’s mineral collection and the Author obtained the rest). These include such rare species as kasolite, boltwoodite (2), francevilleite, sklodowskite (3), uranopilite, phosphuranylite, vandendriesschite (2), meta-autunite (3), metauranocircite, metatorbernite, soddyite and curite. There is a suite of specimens from the Peko bismuth mines at Tenant Creek with at least two specimens (M33327) containing the new mineral junoite (Pb3Cu2Bi8(S,Se)16). A very fine suite of free gold with tellurides from the Great Boulder Mine, Kalgoorlie was also an excellent acquisition (6 specimens consisting of calaverite (3, M33666, M33661, M33665), coloradoite (M33663) and gold (2, M33664, M33662) with associated species such as altaite, krennerite, petzite and sylvanite, were registered into the Museum Victoria’s mineral collection and I got the rest of this suite!).

With a virtually unlimited exchange collection on his doorstep in Broken Hill, Sir Maurice naturally undertook a great deal of exchanging with overseas mineralogists. As a result, the Mawby collection contains specimens from a variety of significant localities in Africa, North and South America and Europe. Some of the most interesting are:

1/ 12 small specimens of bismuthinite (M38703), cassiterite (M32611) cylindrite (2, M32901, M32903), franckeite (2, M32900, M32899), paravauxite (M32892), teallite (M32902), vauxite (M32893), vivianite (M33062), wavellite (M32671) and wurtzite (M32913) crystals from Bolivia (were registered into the Museum Victoria’s mineral collection. In the Mawby collection leftovers the senior Author also picked up a siderite and nickeline from this country).

2/ A suite of 34 specimens from the copper mines in Katanga, Zaire which included the minerals carrollite (3, M33162, M32909, M33141), cattierite (2, M33167, M33139), chalcanthite (M33218), chalcocite (M33161), chrysocolla (M33127), cobaltite (M32971), copper (M33222), cornetite (3, M33165, M33217, M33135), dioptase (2, M33219, M33126), graphite (M33133), heterogenite (2, M33156, M33132), kolwezite (M33157), libethenite (M33258), malachite (5, M33131, M33215, M33129, M33130, M33236), monazite (M33137), plancheite (2, M33158, M33136), pseudomalachite (2, M33163, M33128), renierite (2, M33216, M33134), shattuckite (3 M33164, M33125, M33220), siegenite (M33138), vaesite (M33140)

3/ A number of rare minerals from Langban, Sweden, including berzeliite (M32845), braunite (M32876), hausmannite (M33149), hedyphane (M32846), lead (3, M32847, M32861, M32862), nadorite (M32848), pinakiolite (M32868), pyroaurite (M32869), quenselite (M32872), richterite (2, M32843, M32844), trimerite (M32873),

4/ Suites of phosphates (and other minerals) from the pegmatite deposits of Maine, U.S.A. including apatite (2, M32939, M32880), beryl (2, M32930, M32679), beryllonite (M32884), chrysoberyl (M32921), elbaite (2, M32917, M32854), herderite (4, M32904, M32896, M32883, M32891), lazulite (M32937), lepidolite (M32678), muscovite (M32860), pollucite (M32885), purpurite (M32688), spodumene (2, M32924, M32858), tourmaline (M32855), triphylite (M32936)

5/ Suites of representative minerals from the Jumbo Mine (and Copper Mountain), Prince of Wales Island, Alaska (that included actinolite (M32850), epidote (M32849), grossular (2, M32874, M32878), orthoclase (M32838), quartz (M32833), stilbite (M32851) and zoisite (M32908)) and from the Spruce Pine Mine, North Carolina (that were obtained from my old late friend, Donald Fraser, in the 1930’s and included beryl (M32853), clarkeite (2, M32830 and M32841), kyanite (M32877), uraninite (M33159) and zoisite (M32840)).

6/ A set of 5 specimens from the carbonatite complex at Palabora, South Africa (which were chalcopyrite (M33206), magnetite (M32790), phlogopite (M32789), valleriite (M32738) and vermiculite (M32720)).

Of the more spectacular overseas pieces, the best is a 27cm x 18 cm specimen of sphalerite crystals up to 3.5 cm on edge from the Tochibora No. 9 orebody, Kamioka Mine, Japan (M33660). Other fine specimens include apophyllite crystals (M32605) from the same locality in Japan as from where the above sphalerite came from, apophyllite from Finland (M32619), enargite crystals from Northern Taiwan (2, M32719, M35711), two good uvarovite specimens from Outokumpu, Finland (M32614, M32617) and a fine yellow fluorite from the Scordale-Hilton mine, Appleby, England (M33036). (There were also other nice overseas specimens in the Mawby mineral collection such as the chalcopyrite (M32920), copper (M32622) and mercury (M32656) from Japan (a large cinnabar specimen from Japan that was originally in the Mawby mineral collection and rejected by Bill Birch was registered into the Museum’s mineral collection as part of the Andersen donation in 1999); luzonite (M32672) from Taiwan; Mimetite from Cumberland, England; orpiment from Peru; sylvanite (2, M33153 and M32739) from the emperor Mine, Fiji to mention just a few.)

In an article such as this it is difficult to give an overall impression of the Mawby Collection, other than to outline its main features. The museum gained at least 25 species that were not previously represented in its mineral collection (and which included beryllonite (M32884), cattierite (2, M33167, M33139), clarkeite (2, M32830 and M32841), Corderoite (4, M33180, M33181, M33182, M33188), Junoite (M33327), kolwezite (M33157), luzonite (M32672), osarizawaite (M32633), patronite (M32996), quenselite (M32872), trimerite (M32873), etc.), as well as obtaining good locality suites and a number of display specimens. In addition Sir Maurice donated his mineralogical files which contain over 500 items of correspondence relating to the build up of his collection. These files will be catalogued and it is hoped to be able to produce a cross referencing system.” (Birch, 1977).





BIBLIOGRAPHY

Birch, W.D. (1977) Maurice Mawby-a memorial. Australian Mineralogist, 1(12), 53.

Birch, W.D. (1977) The mineral collection of Sir Maurice Mawby. Australian Mineralogist, 1(12), 58-60.

Chalmers, O. and Worner, H. (1982) Collectors and collections. In: Worner, H.K. and Mitchell, R. (Editors) Minerals of Broken Hill, Australian Mining and Smelting Limited, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 33- 35.

Hodge-Smith, T. (1930) Sturtite: a new mineral. Broken Hill, New South Wales. Records of the Australian Museum 17, 410-412.

Mawby, M. (1975) The Contribution of Broken Hill, N.S.W. Australian Mineralogist, 1 (1), 1.

McNamara, G., Chalmers, O., Birch, W.D. and Plimer, I. (1999) The investigators, the identities and their minerals. In: Birch, W.D, (Editor) Minerals of brokenhill. Broken Hill City Council in conjunction with Museum Victoria, Victoria, Australia, 36-57.

Pring, A., McBriar, E.M. and Birch, W.D. (1989) Mawbyite, a new arsenate of lead and iron related to tsumcorite and carminite, from Broken Hill, New South Wales. American Mineralogist, 74, 1377-1381.

Worner, H.K. and Mitchell, R. (1982) Introduction. In: Worner, H.K. and Mitchell, R. (Editors) Minerals of Broken Hill. Australian Mining and Smelting Limited, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 8-11.