Block 45 Gold Mine, Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines, Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Kalgoorlie-Boulder Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Block 45 Gold Mine	Mine
Kalgoorlie Consolidated Gold Mines	Group of Mines
Kalgoorlie-Boulder	- not defined -
Kalgoorlie-Boulder Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

The Block 45's main claim to fame is that it was the first discovery of telluride on the Golden Mile. Telluride is rare in Australia, and is phenomenally rich in gold. The Golden Mile turned out to have telluride in spades.

The strange stone had puzzled management for a week. Assayer and mining engineer, A.J. Holroyd, was called in and when tested it turned out to be the telluride sylvanite. Several other telluride species were subsequently identified. Every mine manager, assayer, and analytical chemist on the Golden Mile descended on the mine. Simpson credits Richard Eades as the first discoverer of telluride on the Golden Mile, with Eric Huntley being supplied and testing the material. Holroyd's confirmation was shortly after.

Mining reporters were singularly unimpressed used to showy specimen stone being displayed to them. Dull, looks like galena, has dirty oxidised mustard gold with it, were some of the disparaging comments. Three lodes traverse the property called Brown Hill, Kelly's and Mount Morgan. Telluride had initially been found at the 100 foot level.

The Adelaide based company immediately decided to sell the mine, while share prices were high. They lacked money to finance extracting and processing the ore. There was a shareholder revolt, based largely on national pride. However later reality set in, when they realised the amount of extra money they would have to stump up. The mine was floated in London, the amount of shares doubling, making the mine heavily over capitalised.

This did not last long as in 1902, the company was wound up, the Kalgoorlie Amalgamated Limited taking over the mine. They in turn soon amalgamated with two other companies, in a continual process across the 20th century of lease consolidation across the Golden Mile.

In 1911, tributer Frederick Baum was killed in a fall of earth underground.

The lease sprang to life again in 1934, when the Golden Mile Block 45 Company NL was floated in Melbourne to take over the lease from Perth based Consolidated Goldmining Investment NL. Some drilling and general rooting around took place, until they ran out of funds. The lease was sold in 1939 to the Paringa Mining and Exploration Company Limited.

On June 2 1956, on the 60th anniversary of the telluride discovery, a plaque and obelisk was unveiled at or close to the Block 45 site. The map co-ordinates mark this site, although if correct, has been swallowed up by the super pit.

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References