THE MINES AND MINERALS OF THE DUNDAS REGION, TASMANIA

By Peter Andersen

P.O. Box 2418
Mildura
Victoria 3502
Australia
Email: pjandersen50@hotmail.com


INTRODUCTION

Dundas! The very name of this old Tasmanian mining centre exudes a feeling of expectancy as one dreams of the fine lead minerals found and collected from there in days gone by. Such minerals as seldom found since those days; and which included the hyacinth red crystals of crocoite; the water clear anglesite crystals; the crystals of white, yellow and green cerussite; the robin egg blue dundasite; the rare crystals of Phosgenite; and so on. All of which are bound to whet ones’ appetite to visit this long gone town and its old mines in the hope that further specimens of these spectacular crystals will be unearthed in all their glory once again. So join with me, through the pages of this article, as we visit a town of no more and old mines which have almost ceased to exist, in the quest of those elusive and beautiful minerals that brought fame to an obscure Tasmanian mining region (Figure 2).

The Dundas region has been acknowledged as consisting of two main mining districts and they are:

1/ The South Dundas region with most of the mines being located in the vicinity of the base of Mount Dundas.

2/ The North Dundas region with the various mines being located along the old Melba Flats- Williamsford railway line that was called the North-East Dundas Tramway.

This region of Tasmania suffers from an annual rainfall of over 2500mm and the terrain is very rugged with thick growths of impenetrable vegetation along creeks and valleys known as horizontal scrub. It was through these extremely difficult wet and rugged conditions (Figures 3 and 4) that the early prospectors trudged in their explorations for commercial orebodies, and they did manage to find most of them too.

The actual old Dundas township was located 10 km east of the mining town of Zeehan (Figure1).In the old days access to Dundas was provided by a road and a branch line of the Zeehan-Strahan railway. Nowadays only the road exists and it is quite passable for two wheel drive vehicles in all types of weather (Figure 5). The town of Dundas is no more (Figures 6 and 7). The last remaining buildings were pulled down years ago and the land is now only used on occasions for the grazing of cattle by local farmers. Button grass now covers the cleared area where the old town of Dundas once stood (Figure 8). There is an exploration licence held over the entire Dundas region and all individual mining leases are held by locals who are only interested in operating their mines for specimen minerals, some of which have been quite successful. Peace and serenity now reigns where many years before some 1000 odd miners drank their booze and fought each other over the local whores.


THE HISTORY OF DUNDAS

The mining district of Dundas came into existence in late 1886 when argentiferous galena was discovered at what would become the site of the Comet Mine by a group of old west coast prospectors that included William “Comet” Johnson. This was the time when prospectors were spreading out and seeking new ore fields in the Tasmanian West Coast as mining districts such as Zeehan, Rosebery, Queenstown etc. were coming into existence. In the spring of 1886 this group had been a three man party and had left the Montagu Mine located at the Heemskirk mining field to the west of Zeehan to prospect the Dundas region. They used the ‘Despatch’ Hut for a supply depot. This group was delayed by the heavy scrub that was prevalent in the area and wandered a lot trying to avoid it. Meeting another prospecting group they joined forces and intended to follow the Henty River to the sea, but first heavy rain, then snow, prevented the now enlarged party from doing this. The group was soon running short of food and were forced to camp at White Spur, south of Williamsford. On the fifth day after having eaten the last of their provisions this party headed towards Zeehan passing over the outcrop of what would eventually become the Comet-Maestri Mine. It would have been an understatement to say that this outcrop was merely inconspicuous as this was some of the most heavily mineralised hectares of Dundas. Soon the Dundas area was pegged under a number of mining leases and long gone mining companies such as the Adelaide Proprietary Silver Mining Company, the West Comet Prospecting Syndicate, The South Comet Lead-Zinc mine, the Maestri Broken Hill Silver Mining Company, the Comet Silver Mining Company, etc. started mining the orebodies of their mining leases and ore production was soon under way. And such ore too! Its like will never be seen again. In those days the main ore extracted from the various mines of the Dundas region consisted of a ferromanganese gossan, whose main use was as a flux in the Tasmanian Smelting Company’s smelters located at Zeehan and often called the Zeehan smelters (Figures 27-29). This ferromanganese gossan contained immense quantities of the oxidised minerals for which Dundas is so deservedly famous for. Literally thousands of tons of very fine specimens of anglesite, cerussite, crocoite, dundasite etc. was mined and transported by rail to the smelters located at Zeehan whereby this specimen flux was used to upgrade the lead and silver values of the ores from the Zeehan mines where back then it brought the equivalent of 9 shillings (=$10 in today’s monetary values) per ton for its lead and silver content. Very few of these early specimens were saved by the diligent miners, but those few that were may now be seen in the mineral collection of the world’s major museums (Figure 60). The mind can only boggle at the number of fine mineral specimens that came from the mines of Dundas, and this especially applies to the mineral crocoite, which met their end in the fiery furnaces of the Zeehan smelters.

The government geologist of the time, Albert Montgomery, visited the newly found Dundas mineral field in 1889 and at the time of his visit there had already been a large area of this new mining field pegged out. By 1890 at least nineteen claims were pegged in the South Dundas region and there were twenty five in the north Dundas region and the township of Dundas was coming into existence (Figure 9). The township was built on level ground, mainly on the south side of the Dundas Rivulet, in a space cleared out from the dense rainforest. In 1891 the town of Dundas had a population of around 1100 consisting of miners, shopkeepers, children, and harlots amongst others and the buildings that had been erected included three hotels (the Royal, Keys and the Miner’s Arms), a brewery (of course as mining is always thirsty work), a school, churches, halls, a post office, stores and a railway station. Peter Bancroft managed to come across a very good description of life in the town of Dundas when it was booming in the late 1890’s and I quote:

“The Zeehan Dundas Tramway was extended westward toward a new station in the township (the Comet-Maestri Station see Figure 10). H. Johnson was building a “commodius” hotel, and Robert McKimmie had opened a general merchandise store. The Evershed brothers sold magazines and books in another establishment. There was a “red-light district,” livery stable, school, church, and several other pubs. Some businesses still operated in tents, but most establishments had been modernised and built of wood. Of a Sunday morning, “respectable” individuals walked down to the church or lounged in the shade of store porches. Representing the “opposition” Chinese Pete, a brothel operator, chose the same hour to parade his harlots through town in carriages (apparently there is no record of the Dundas townspeople’s reactions to this weekly event-Bancroft, 1984)”.

When the Dundas township was essentially abandoned in 1913 it was not long before the last building had been pulled down and the space the town had occupied reverted back to the lush vegetation that grows in this region of Tasmania.

The State Inspector of Mines and Government Geologist, Mr. A. Montgomery visited the Dundas mining region in 1889 and in his report he mentioned that little work had actually been done on any of the claims but prospects were good on several of them. He also realised even then that the lapidary potential of the district was extremely good as this 1890 report of his 1889 visit to the Dundas region stated that “there is considerable quantity of serpentine in parts of the Mount Dundas field-some of it of very good colour. When the district is opened up, it is very probable that serpentine fit for ornamental purposes will be found. So beautiful a stone should not be neglected.” (Montgomery, 1890). It is only recently that one of these serpentine deposits located at Stichtite Hill have been opened up and commercially mined for lapidary purposes by Mike and Eleanor Phelan under the name of Dundas Extended Minerals.

By the end of 1891 there were 74 claims operating at both the North and South Dundas districts and the road from Zeehan to Dundas was also completed. Previously all the residents of Dundas had to bush bash through the scrub in order to reach Zeehan when they had to restock their supplies. There was an article written by a Mr. G.D. Gibson in the Zeehan and Dundas Herald that was published on Friday the 17th October 1890 describing the atrocious conditions that the Dundas residents had to suffer in order to get from Zeehan to Dundas. By 1893 a branch of this road had been extended to the North Dundas mining field. In 1897 the Tasmanian State Government constructed a 2 foot gauge tramway from Nickel Junction (at Melba Flats) through the North Dundas mining field to Williamsford. This tramway line went through some marvellous scenery with the most spectacular being the Montezuma Falls at the base of Mount Read (Figures 11-12).

In August of 1891 the collapse of the Van Diemans Land Bank was a death blow to a number of the mines in the Dundas district as 20 in the region closed down the day after the bank was forced to close its doors. Between 1896 and 1904 only the Comet Mine was able to operate profitably and the Adelaide Proprietary Mine, along with some in the Northern part of Dundas were able to produce again after 1904. From there on production was sporadic and effectively by 1913 the Dundas region had essentially ceased to be a large mining field and the town of Dundas and its inhabitants had ceased to exist. The Zeehan to Dundas railway closed its operations in 1925 and by 1930 the North East Dundas tramway had also ceased to run.

An interesting historical event occurred in 1899 when Warren M. Foote (or one of his representatives) of the Dr. A. E. Foote, Minerals for Scientific and Educational Purposes company in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, visited the west coast of Tasmania for the purpose of obtaining mineral specimens for this mineral specimen company back in the U.S.A. Foote (or his representative) engaged a local mining crew and worked the Adelaide Proprietary Mine by driving in an adit for the purpose of obtaining mineral specimens, specifically crocoite. The following description, as described in an undated Foote mineral catalogue issued around 1899, is taken from Bob Middleton’s article in the 1988 “Australia” issue of the Mineralogical Record:

“The discovery of new forms of this wonderful mineral is the result of over a year’s work of our collector, in which the old Siberian specimens were totally outclassed. The various Tasmanian mines yielding the chromate of lead have been abandoned for some years and offered no hope of specimens in the future, the water in the levels having ruined all the specimens in the porous rock. The surface indications at the Adelaide appeared to warrant operations, and a tunnel was driven into the Hill above. After much expensive labor a number of fine rich coloured crystals on dark gangue were found, and a good supply of pure massive Crocoite saved. Further on, however, in a clayey deposit, our collector was fortunate to strike a patch of loose prisms 3-9 cm long, superbly terminated, and of a most gorgeous translucent to transparent scarlet-red. The planes are exceptionally brilliant, and the angles of ideal sharpness and perfection…. Only a few perfect crystals were saved as compared with the number of broken, but otherwise choice crystals. Following this great strike, several months of fruitless and expensive tunnelling forced an abandonment of the work, at a depth of 232 feet, closing the most extensive mining ever done solely for scientific mineral specimens” (Middleton, 1988). Thus this very first enterprise to mine the Adelaide Proprietary Mine for crocoite specimens was reasonably successful in that they made one good strike of crocoite but were forced, in the end, to abandon this venture after several months of fruitless tunnelling to a depth of 71 metres (232 feet). This would have to be the very first attempt ever made of commercially working a mine just solely for the specimen minerals that it contained. In America it was the wealthy collectors of that day such as Clarence Bement, the wealthy Philadelphian businessman, that benefited the most out of these specimens from Dundas imported into the U.S.A. by dealers such as the Foote Mineral company. In fact Bement probably purchased a number of these crocoite specimens that the Foote Mineral company obtained from this specimen mining project of the Adelaide Proprietary Mine and in all likely hood these specimens are now in the American Museum of Natural History as part of the Morgan bequest of 1900. It was the New York financier, John Pierpont Morgan who purchased the Bement mineral collection when it became available for purchase and he donated it in its entirety to the American Museum of Natural History.

Even though mining had pretty well ceased by the 1920’s it was not the end of mining at Dundas as some of the mines were reopened a number of times for short periods when the commodity markets suggested that it was commercially viable to extract the ore that remained in them. This was particularly so with the Razorback Tin Mine, and also with the South Comet mine as it was last worked as a commercially viable lead-zinc ore mine for a number of years in the 1990’s. Most of the mines of Dundas are held under leases now for the purpose of specimen mining and a number of them, particularly the Adelaide Proprietary, Kapi, Red Lead and Dundas Extended mines, have been quite successful at this type of venture. Many of the mineral specimens that have been collected from these specimen mining ventures may be seen in the collections of Museums and mineral collectors around the world today, as evidenced by the suite of minerals from the various mines of Dundas put together by the author (Figure 61)


LOCAL GEOLOGY

The basement rocks within the Dundas region consist of older Pre-Cambrian (Proterozoic) schists which have been named the Concert Schists (Figure 13). These schists consist of grey-greenish grey interbedded sandstones, siltstones and shales that have been converted into a variable suite of quartz muscovite and graphite schists by a low grade regional tectonic event.

These basement Concert Schists have been overlaid by younger Pre-Cambrian quartzites, phyllites and black slates which have been called the Oonah Formation. Within the Dundas environs the Oonah Formation has a thickness of approximately 750 metres and plunges south east below the Cambrian and other younger sediments in anticlinal folds. These Pre-Cambrian metamorphic rocks of the Oonah Formation outcrop in Dundas near the Comet Mine and this sequence of outcropping older rocks surrounded by younger ones has been called the Dundas Inlier. Overlying the Oonah Formation is a sequence of lower to middle Cambrian red, purple, green and grey turbidites which have been named the Crimson Creek Formation. The turbidites which comprise the Crimson Creek Formation consist of a number of inter-bedded strata of shales, greywackes and conglomerates. These inter-bedded sediments appear to be dismembered ophiolite sequences of sea floor igneous and sedimentary rocks. The dating of the Crimson Creek Formation to the age of lower to middle Cambrian has been accomplished by the use of fossil dendroids (Archaeolafoea serialis) and the Crimson Creek Formation does not outcrop extensively within the Dundas region.

The Crimson Creek Formation grades conformably into a sediment sequence known as the Dundas Group. The Dundas Group consists of a sequence of interbedded purple, grey and greenish grey siltstones, mudstones, greywackes and conglomerates of middle Cambrian age. The Dundas Group is the most extensive sequence of sediments in the Dundas region and for easier correlation the Dundas Group has been subdivided into a number of different formations with the age and lithology of the sediments being the basis of this subdivision (refer to Table 1)

Table 1 Subdivision of the Dundas Group of Sediments into Local Formations.

These rock sequences so far described have been extensively intruded by a large number of ultramafic bodies that originally were chromite rich dunites and and related olivine rocks of the mafic-ultramafic complexes (Bottrill et al, 2006) and these intrusions occurred during the early Cambrian era. These ultramafic bodies are almost totally serpentinised and in places the serpentinite itself has been altered in varying degrees to chert, dolomite, magnesite, stichtite and talc. All of these alterations probably occurred as a result of hydrothermal fluids induced by the metasomatism involved during the period of Cambrian deformation that occurred. These ultramafic serpentinite bodies are easily seen throughout the Dundas region as most of the mines of Dundas are located next to or very near to an outcrop of serpentinite. Some of the early schools of geological thought even believed that it was these ultramafic serpentinite bodies (rather than the emplacement of the Tasmanian West Coast granites during Devonian times) which controlled the mineralization of the ore emplacements within the Dundas mineral field as quite a few of the orebodies were found congruent with these serpentinites. The name attributed to this group of ultramafic serpentinite bodies is the Early Cambrian Serpentine Hill Ultramafic Complex. The Red Lead Conglomerate which is part of the Dundas group of sediments contains chromite and other ultramafic detritus such as chromium muscovite and illite which indicates that this formation post dates (at least in part) the ultramafic intrusions as they have been eroded after emplacement and redeposited as part of the Cambrian sediments (Brown, 1986).

The next major group of sediments to be deposited in the Dundas region were the Junee Group of sediments which are a number of beds of conglomerates, sandstones, and limestones deposited under marine conditions during Ordovician times. Outcrops of these Ordovician sedimentary rocks are best seen within the Dundas region at Misery Hill, which is located approximately 2 km south west of the site of where the Dundas township was located. The apparent thickness of the Junee Group of sediments in the Dundas region is 500 metres.

The next event to occur in the Dundas region was the folding of all the sediments by a major erogenic event, called the Tabberabberan Erogeny which occurred during middle Devonian times, into a major dome structure, cored by the Precambrian Dundas Inlier, upon which minor NNE and NNW trending anticlinal folds were superimposed and linear zones of intense tensional faulting and shearing also occurred in the same directional trends as the folding (Blissett, 1962). The South Dundas mineralisation lies on the south western side of this dome and the North Dundas Field lies to the north and north-west of this structure. This dome structure was then refolded so as to form part of the overall geosyncline complex known as the Dundas Trough (see Figure 14). The mineralization within the Dundas region was partly controlled by these linear zones of intense tensional faulting and shearing as this provided channels for the mineralization fluids introduced by the emplacement of the Devonian granites. These Devonian granites were accompanied by extensive metasomatism and mineralisation as almost all of the Tasmanian’s West Coast economic mineral deposits were formed during the emplacement of these granite intrusions. It was during the Devonian orogeny tectonic events that the now altered local serpentinite bodies were altered even further into listwanites. The listwanites include many galena rich carbonate veins and locally abundant chromium mica, derived mostly from mica and felspar in the sedimentary rocks and Cr from chromite originally present in the ultramafics (Bottrill et al, 2006). During this time the extensive chromite deposits remaining in the serpentinites were altered to stichtite, along with minor barbertonite and the chromite that was now present in the Cambrian sedimentary rocks was also altered to the green chromium muscovite locally called fuchsite.

During the Cainozoic period deep weathering of the emplaced orebodies occurred. This weathering affected both the adjoining serpentinites and also the wallrocks of the lodes; the carbonate and Pb-Zn-Sb-Ag-As-Sn rich lodes and the listwanites adjacent to the serpentinites were particularly oxidised and leached. The presence of a number of Al rich secondary minerals such as gibbsite, philipsbornite and hinsdalite in the gossans of a number of deposits indicates a low ph (<4) during weathering (Bottrill et al, 2006).

The last major geological activity to occur within the Dundas environs happened during Jurassic times when 250 metres of dolerite was extruded upon a pre Permian erosional surface cut across the steeply dipping Pre-Cambrian and Cambrian sedimentary formations. This extruded dolerite exhibits columnar jointing, formed as a result of rapid cooling, and is the resistant peak of a major physiographical feature of the region. Of course I am referring to Mount Dundas which dominates the Zeehan-Dundas skyline (Figure 13).

The mineralisation that formed the Dundas orebodies occurred during Devonian times, congruent with the emplacement of the granitic intrusions of the Tasmanian west coast which also occurred during the Tabberabberan Erogeny. Most of the oebodies of the Dundas mineral field have been emplaced with the upper Proterozic (Pre-Cambrian) and the lower Cambrian sedimentary rock sequences, or within the dolomitised serpentinites on the south west side of the major Dundas dome.

There have been recorded as occurring in the Dundas region a number of mineral species that have no other locality attribution other than that of Dundas or North East Dundas and this is the list of those species:

acanthite, actinolite, bismutostibiconite, gold, graphite, gudmundite, hematite, hydrocerussite, iridosmine, litharge, lepidocrocite, wollastonite.

Asbolite, barite, cryptomelane, evansite, glaucodot, ilmenite, langite, leadhillite, manganite, melanterite, pitticite, romanechite, todorokite-ranceite, vesuvianite have also been reported in the literature as occurring in the Dundas district but their confirmation as being present does need to be verified.

Many of the Dundas orebodies are small Pb-Zn-Ag fissure lodes occupying shear or fault zones. Those orebodies which were emplaced within the dolomitised serpentinites are replacement orebodies. The upper part of most of the Dundas orebodies have generally undergone extensive weathering thus developing a ferromanganese gossan that contains the many mineral species of the oxidised zone for which the Dundas region is so justly famous. These gossans were mainly derived from a manganiferous siderite which is a common gangue mineral throughout the orebodies of Dundas.

In the North Dundas mineral field the shear or breccia zones consist mostly of siderite-rhodochrosite and dolomite-ankerite rich veins mostly with only minor quartz and erratic pods and stringers of sulphides which are predominately galena and sphalerite with minor chalcopyrite, pyrite and a variety of sulpho-salts (Bottrill et al, 2006). The orebodies of the North Dundas field is poorer in crocoite and other secondary supergene minerals, with the exception of the Kapi mine, than the orebodies of the South Dundas field. This is because weathering of these orbodies was shallower and the gossans poorly developed compared to the other deposits. The northerly group of orebodies have generally a higher Sb, Bi and Cu content than the southerly group of orebodies (Innes, 1995). There was also pods of copper-nickel mineralisation present in the North Dundas mineral fieldand these occurred in the western division of this region.

In the South Dundas mineral field the primary ore occurs as pods of Pb-Zn-Ag sulphides in veins occurring in carbonate rich fault zones cutting Cambrian serpentinites and or sedimentary rocks and Pre-Cambrian slates (Blissett, 1962). The wallrocks in the unweathered lodes are strongly hydrothermally altered ultramafics and are composed of variable amounts of Fe-Ca-Mn carbonates of the ankerite-dolomite-rhodochrosite-siderite group and fine grained quartz. Where the host rocks include serpentinite and a chromium muscovite (“fuchsite”) then a rock type known as listwanite (or litwaenite) is formed (Bottrill et al, 2006). The ore and host rocks in the upper levels of these orebodiese largely weathered to clays and ferromanganese gossans and it was the minerals from this zone, particularly the crocoite specimens, that astounded the world’s collectors when they first appeared on the mineral market back in the late 1800’s.


THE MINES OF THE DUNDAS MINERAL FIELD

There are quite a number of mines and prospects located within the Dundas environs (Figure 16) and some of these mines have become quite famous because of the amount and high quality of the minerals from the oxidised zone that they have produced throughout the years. Nowadays most of the mines of the Dundas region are under lease for the purpose of being worked for the specimen minerals that they still may contain and there is an exploration lease held by a company headed by Tom Kapitany over the entire Dundas region. Generally the lease holders are not too belligerent towards collectors who may wish to collect on the old mine dumps, but woe behold the collector who is caught highgrading in a mine that is being worked for its specimen minerals. Permission to visit a mine should be asked of the lease holder by all collectors before they attempt to go into any of Dundas mines to collect, even if they only plan to collect from the mullock heaps of a particular mine. All of these mines were only small operations in regard to size with adits driven in to the side of hill (Figure 17) being the main way the lode was reached. Some mines did have shafts sunk down to intersect the lodes but there was not many of these dug in the early days of mining operations.

Of the twenty or so well known mines and prospects located within the Dundas region, a total of 7 are still being actively worked at the present for any good mineral specimens that they still may possibly contain. The others are still held under lease and in fact may be worked at a later date for their specimen minerals. There is an exploration lease held over the entire Dundas region by a Melbourne consortium headed by Tom Kapitany (Collector’s World) for the purpose of finding large exploitable bodies of serpentine (preferably containing stichtite) suitable for lapidary purposes which now limits access to the casual mineral collector for collecting minerals in the Dundas region even further.

The mines have been subdivided into the two main regions of Dundas in which they occur and the mine name spellings used in this paper are those that Blissett used in his 1962 Geological Survey Explanatory Report. There have been a range of mine name spellings in the literature and this is one way of uniforming the spellings.


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