Shamrock Mine, Tennant Creek, Barkly Region, Northern Territory, Australia

Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):	19° 37' 0'' South , 134° 10' 45'' East
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):	-19.616804458, 134.179214509

The Shamrock was the first lease pegged on the Tennant Creek Goldfield.

In 1872, the 3200 kilometre long Overland Telegraph Line was completed from Darwin to Port Augusta, much of it through little explored desert. It was one of the greatest engineering feats in Australia during the 19th Century. Repeater stations were constructed, including one from locally quarried stone at Tennant Creek. This can still be seen 10 kilometres north of the town, next to the Stuart Highway.

The isolation, waterless terrane, and attacks by aborigines deterred station staff from exploring the countryside. The Barrow Creek Telegraph Station had been attacked by aborigines, killing two station workers, with over fifty aborigines killed in retaliation.

Patt 'Rabbit' Ambrose, who headed the Tennant Creek Telegraph Station, discovered the Shamrock prospect in 1925. Secondary copper minerals were found in a gossanous outcrop. Local Charlie Windley smelted a sample in his forge. Samples were then sent to South Australian government geologist Dr. Keith Ward, who was said to be surprised at the conglomerate mixture, which also included cobalt.

The brothers, Patt, Arthur, and Jim took up the lease, containing secondary copper, gold, and silver values. Copper values were said to cut out at 40 feet below the surface. With no nearby battery, and mediocre gold values, the discovery saw no rush to the location. That would have to wait until 1933, when other Tennant Creek pioneers discovered gold elsewhere in the area.
The Ambrose brothers sank three shafts to 40, 30 and 15 feet.

Only minor information was subsequently found. In 1945, the lease was taken out by Maxwell Clement Flannagan (GML 158E). Pat Young and Charles Thomas took up the lease in 1952 for copper, installed a plant worth 4000 pounds, then stated in the Wardens Court one year later they could not make the lease pay. For a period after 1986, the lease was held by J. Love and/or G. Hamilton. Holes were drilled into the deposit in 1965, and 1971, and then explored by Werrie Gold Ltd, with no remarkable results.

When examined later, the site contained a small open cut to 20 metres in length, a 34 metre deep shaft and mullock piles. The surface dumps and workings showed gossanous ironstone, friable manganese oxides, talc schist, oxidised magnetite, shale, high grade secondary copper minerals including malachite, atacamite, paratacamite, chrysocolla and cuprite.

The deposit is located in a flexure in highly deformed shale and siltstone, the mineralisation in black chlorite schist, chlorite-talc schist, and talc schist, containing jasper, limonite, massive (un-named) sulphides, and ironstone. The ore body dips steeply south, and plunges steeply west. The Footwall is fine grained siltstone, shale, mudstone conglomerate, and Hanging Wall hematitic shale. The source states at the time of inspection there were abundant secondary copper species in the dumps, and gold could be panned freely from the mullock dumps.

Werrie Gold's testing obtained up to 4.00 g/t Au, and up to 2.21% Cu from sampling the dumps. Testing the lode found low grade Au values, but 'reasonable' Cu. The mine has historically produced only 20 ounces of gold, and 6 tonnes of copper.

Mineral List

9 valid minerals.

Rock Types Recorded

Entries shown in red are rocks recorded for this region.

References

External Links