Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):	37° 34' 12'' South , 143° 51' 3'' East
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):	-37.57000,143.85093
GeoHash:	G#: r1q632t4c
Köppen climate type:	Cfb : Temperate oceanic climate

Historic gold mine.

The claim is at the junction of the Golden Point and its tributary leads Malakoff and Nightingale. There were many leases in the area in the late 1850's, and like at various others parts of the goldfield at this time much litigation in the Court of Mines over who owned what piece of land, and accusations of encroachment. It amounted to a legal, and sometimes physical underground war between numerous parties, only solved when a Royal Commission was called, which arbitrarily determined what company could mine what land, and ended the legal arguments.

The Telegraph, Great Western, British and West Malakoff companies were all in dispute with each other. The Telegraph and Great Western miners entered into an alliance against the West Malakoff. Meanwhile the British Mine miners were erecting barricades underground, and arranging combustible materials to burn believing they would be invaded by the Great Western miners. Instead they traversed the Telegraph workings and attacked the West Malakoff miners while they were working. The West Malakoff men were overpowered, then sent running with ore wagons pushed down an incline towards them. On the surface the West Malakoff men armed themselves, then took over the Telegraph and Great Western mine engine houses, thereby preventing the thirty or so Great Western men from surfacing. The police arrived, however the men refused to surface, and a stand off ensued throughout the night. Some were eventually arrested, and faced court charged with assault and damaging a mine.

They were John McDonald, Samuel Johns, Laurence Branscombe, Patrick Flannigan, Robert Morrison, John Jones, John Earhardt, William Kelly, Martin Mullins, William Johnson, William Stevens, Abraham Berman. A jury acquitted them after 20 minutes of deliberation.

Robert Vetter was killed in a fall of earth January 1858. In monetary terms the company stated it had achieved 25 000 pounds worth of gold by March 1859. Information of activity was only found between 1857 to 1859.

The shaft is at the Midland Highway and South Street intersection.

Regional Geology

This geological map and associated information on rock units at or nearby to the coordinates given for this locality is based on relatively small scale geological maps provided by various national Geological Surveys. This does not necessarily represent the complete geology at this locality but it gives a background for the region in which it is found.

Click on geological units on the map for more information. Click here to view full-screen map on Macrostrat.org

Holocene - Miocene 0 - 23.03 Ma ID: 704630

Newer Volcanic Group Age: Cenozoic (0 - 23.03 Ma) Stratigraphic Name: Newer Volcanic Group Description: Cinder cones - scoria, minor ash and agglutinates; Lava flows - tholeiitic to minor alkaline and basanitic lavas. Comments: igneous mafic volcanic; synthesis of multiple published descriptions Lithology: Igneous mafic volcanic Reference: Raymond, O.L., Liu, S., Gallagher, R., Zhang, W., Highet, L.M. Surface Geology of Australia 1:1 million scale dataset 2012 edition. Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia). [5]

Early Silurian - Cambrian 427.4 - 541 Ma ID: 3185333

Paleozoic sedimentary rocks Age: Paleozoic (427.4 - 541 Ma) Comments: Lachlan Fold Belt Lithology: Sedimentary rocks Reference: Chorlton, L.B. Generalized geology of the world: bedrock domains and major faults in GIS format: a small-scale world geology map with an extended geological attribute database. doi: 10.4095/223767. Geological Survey of Canada, Open File 5529. [154]

Data and map coding provided by Macrostrat.org, used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License

References