Hard rock gold from around the world...

[Goldchaser1]

Been to the "Pit" many times Goldchaser and always in awe at how much dirt and rock has come out of that place. The open pit mining began in 1989 and to produce 21 million ounces since then is just mind blowing. To think Paddy Hannon started the rush with his hundred ounce find in 1893 and to now have mined 58 million ounces since then from the pit is just astounding.

The gold in the current ore is mostly too fine so the chance of you picking up a few species is less than winning lotto . The richest ore was unfortunately found at the top of the original shafts so one needed to be there in 1893 to have picked up what would have been eye opening species....old story, we are over 100 years too late.

Yeah if Paddy and Flanagan seen it now they'd be awe struck,there was 3 of them,can't remember the other blokes name,
Northern Star have big plans in motion here,it's all happening...

 

[user 4386]

All very good information about gold from "around the world", and many of us have read and witnessed what and where the gold in those parts of the world was derived from. I remember very well when that lot of gold in the original pic was found, and it hit all the newspapers in WA.. Much of the gold from over there was associated with "quartz" and occurs as native gold. In fact the Golden Mile at Kalgoorlie contained over 1500 tons of gold with almost 75% being native gold. I still say that the gold in the original pic is quartz based as can be easily seen from the pic....but I'm always open to correction.

A very interesting "Australian Gold" read with pics is " Gigantic Gold specimens found in Kambalda, Western Australia...found in "Quartz" veins and worth millions.

The pic you show with the dozer...is that the one where the 400oz wire gold nugget came from...

A good new thread would be "How gold is formed around the world" and associated geology to go with it.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-10/rich-gold-seam-half-a-kilometre-deep-in-kambalda/10219576

No, the 400 oz nugget the student found was from an open pit on a large quartz vein system. That is the dominant style in Victoria and probably dominates around Australia.

 

[user 4386]

Electric Shovel,i'll take a stab at Boddington goldieriocks?

No, Round Mountain Nevada was where the gold in the original photo was found,

 

[user 4386]

Bit of research and found the photo was sent to me by a US friend, and it appears the photo was taken here,

https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?p=AONE&...|A197234854&v=2.1&it=r&sid=AONE&asid=6246f7b7
And yet another link confirming above.

http://nevada-outback-gems.com/prospect/gold_specimen/Natural_gold.htm

Correct

 

[WalnLiz]

No, the 400 oz nugget the student found was from an open pit on a large quartz vein system. That is the dominant style in Victoria and probably dominates around Australia.

Would love to have been in your shoes goldie to have witnessed a piece of gold like that. Hopefully someday I will get that lucky myself. The biggest piece of true wire gold I have seen personally was 27oz and came from an open cut in the Kimberly. They are few and far between these days, as is true crystalline gold of any decent size. Many of the commercial mines from way back didn't put the same emphasis on collector pieces and unfortunately got processed with all the other ore.

 

[davent]

Don't know if this will work, but if it does, the clip shows an absolutely incredible piece of gold.
Ok tap on the writing down the right side.
A series of pictures comes up.
Press the picture of the bloke on his back with the sdc, think it's the ist pic on the top left. That's it.

https://www.tiktok.com/embed/7141052166831213867

 

[user 4386]

I guess another point worth making is that a lot of mines (including in Australia) only contain very minor quartz veining within the ore.
Often if an ore body gets metamorphosed the original ore changes to new minerals and quartz veins disappear by chemical reaction. Hemlo in Canada is a multi-million ounce example - this is ore.


Big Bell near Cue is another example (2.6 million oz) - I don't remember any distinct quartz vein there. President Herbert Hoover used to be the mine manager and a member of Cue municipal council (as he was also at Sons of Gwalior mine at Leonora, 5.5 million oz production so far, where his old house is perched on the edge of the open cut). The ore body there is a mica schist with just quartz stringers. Also Challenger in a quartz-feldspar-kyanite-garnet pegmatite (i.e. granite vein) in South Australia (750,000 oz). Others of this type are being found in the Wheat Belt of WA.

Also a small garnet rock gold body without quartz near Bathurst.



And of course Olympic Dam copper ore body has produced millions of ounces of gold from ore with no quartz veins - a breccia ore body of just iron oxide and copper and iron sulphides. Sulphide ore bodies weather to iron oxide (gossan) at surface.



Australia's largest gold mine, Boddington (at least 10 million oz so far, another 10 m oz still unmined) original mined gold from a bauxite laterite at surface (with coarse gold). It also produces copper.


Here is another type of sulphide-rich gold ore with no defined quartz veins (in granite from Canada but similar to Cadia and others in NSW).



Because gold can form nuggets in laterite soil above any of these types of ore body with negligible or no quartz, it is important to be aware of them.

 

[Jaros]

Thanks mate.

 

[user 4386]

Would love to have been in your shoes goldie to have witnessed a piece of gold like that. Hopefully someday I will get that lucky myself. The biggest piece of true wire gold I have seen personally was 27oz and came from an open cut in the Kimberly. They are few and far between these days, as is true crystalline gold of any decent size. Many of the commercial mines from way back didn't put the same emphasis on collector pieces and unfortunately got processed with all the other ore.

I've seen lots in the ounce range. When I was a teenager I used to get wire gold underground from a mine in the outer Melbourne suburbs (Yarrambat). I think I still have some small pieces of that (and somewhere I have some photos of it).

 

[WalnLiz]

I guess another point worth making is that a lot of mines (including in Australia) only contain very minor quartz veining within the ore.
Often if an ore body gets metamorphosed the original ore changes to new minerals and quartz veins disappear by chemical reaction. Hemlo in Canada is a multi-million ounce example - this is ore.

View attachment 4525
Big Bell near Cue is another example (2.6 million oz) - I don't remember any distinct quartz vein there. President Herbert Hoover used to be the mine manager and a member of Cue municipal council (as he was also at Sons of Gwalior mine at Leonora, 5.5 million oz production so far, where his old house is perched on the edge of the open cut). The ore body there is a mica schist with just quartz stringers. Also Challenger in a quartz-feldspar-kyanite-garnet pegmatite (i.e. granite vein) in South Australia (750,000 oz), and a small garnet rock gold body without quartz near Bathurst. Others of this type are being found in the Wheat Belt of WA.

And of course Olympic Dam copper ore body has produced millions of ounces of gold from ore with no quartz veins - a breccia ore body of just iron oxide and copper and iron sulphides. Sulphide ore bodies weather to iron oxide (gossan) at surface.

View attachment 4547

Australia's largest gold mine, Boddington (at least 10 million oz so far, another 10 m oz still unmined) original mined gold from a bauxite laterite at surface (with coarse gold). It also produces copper.

View attachment 4550
Here is another type of sulphide-rich gold ore with no defined quartz veins (in granite from Canada but similar to Cadia and others in NSW).

View attachment 4548

Because gold can form nuggets in laterite soil above any of these types of ore body with negligible or no quartz, it is important to be aware of them.

Great pics Goldie....I know Big Bell well as it's one of the mines I've had access to for a while and found some very nice gold there in the days gone bye. It's through them that we got access to the Emerald mine and even though the emeralds were closer to greenish Beryl we still got quite a few true emeralds amongst them. With you in the wire gold size and the biggest I've found personally weighed 29 grams, though I held the 27oz piece my mate found in my hand. Have several specimens around the 8 gram mark and best crystalline at 13 grams. Would love to find bigger bits and know locations where they exist but would need an excavator and in NSW where I work that's a big "Buckleys"

 

[WalnLiz]

Don't know if this will work, but if it does, the clip shows an absolutely incredible piece of gold.
Ok tap on the writing down the right side.
A series of pictures comes up.
Press the picture of the bloke on his back with the sdc, think it's the ist pic on the top left. That's it.

That last shot of the crystalline is just magnificent....brings a huge premium when it becomes museum quality like that. Makes my pieces look very average.

 

[user 4386]

All very good information about gold from "around the world", and many of us have read and witnessed what and where the gold in those parts of the world was derived from. I remember very well when that lot of gold in the original pic was found, and it hit all the newspapers in WA.. Much of the gold from over there was associated with "quartz" and occurs as native gold. In fact the Golden Mile at Kalgoorlie contained over 1500 tons of gold with almost 75% being native gold. I still say that the gold in the original pic is quartz based as can be easily seen from the pic....but I'm always open to correction.

A very interesting "Australian Gold" read with pics is " Gigantic Gold specimens found in Kambalda, Western Australia...found in "Quartz" veins and worth millions.

The pic you show with the dozer...is that the one where the 400oz wire gold nugget came from...

A good new thread would be "How gold is formed around the world" and associated geology to go with it.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-10/rich-gold-seam-half-a-kilometre-deep-in-kambalda/10219576

Perhaps it is worth mentioning that 75% being native gold at Kalgoorlie is because 20% does not occur as gold at all but as gold telluride minerals that don't even resemble gold. Such as calaverite (AuTe2) which contains around 40% gold. The other 5% is very fine gold locked in sulphide minerals. So the term "native gold" in this case is referring to visible native gold.

Calaverite - 40% gold!


In many Nevada deposits like the shale that I showed photos of, gold is rarely seen - it is so fine that it is truly invisible, too small to be resolved by the naked eye. In fact too fine to be seen under a normal microscope. The gold is actually present as individual gold atoms or ions that substitute into the crystal structure of sulphide minerals, mostly pyrite, and can only be resolved under an electron microscope. You could crush the rock and pan it and still not see a spec of gold, even if it were going half an ounce or more per tonne. It occurs in different concentrations in growth zones in individual pyrite crystals.

 

[Nightjar]

Yeah if Paddy and Flanagan seen it now they'd be awe struck,there was 3 of them,can't remember the other blokes name,
Northern Star have big plans in motion here,it's all happening...

Dan O'Shea was the third partner.
Some reading here;

https://exhibitions.slwa.wa.gov.au/s/mewa/page/PatrickHannan

 

[Conrad]

I've seen lots in the ounce range. When I was a teenager I used to get wire gold underground from a mine in the outer Melbourne suburbs (Yarrambat). I think I still have some small pieces of that (and somewhere I have some photos of it).

When I was 12 a friend of mine lived in Yarrambat and there was a shaft on his family’s property. I spent ages specking the mullock but only ever found one tiny grain of gold in quartz. I can’t recall clearly where they lived but I think their place fronted the Eastern side of Yan Yean Road

 

[wiley coyote]

Panned my first speck of gold in a gully just west of the Yan Yean road, using a hub cap off my mark 2 Zephyr about 1971. There was a poppet head on the east side of the road. I think it was called The Golden Steps. I gave the speck to the guy who took me there. Must have been good karma for me.

 

[user 4386]

Panned my first speck of gold in a gully just west of the Yan Yean road, using a hub cap off my mark 2 Zephyr about 1971. There was a poppet head on the east side of the road. I think it was called The Golden Steps. I gave the speck to the guy who took me there. Must have been good karma for me.

I suspect it was the road north through Yarrambat and was the Golden Stairs mine west of the road- now under a housing development (the Plenty River is on the west side of the hill). I used to go underground there when it was operating - Bill Wallace (deceased) and Stan Bone (still alive and well around St Andrews last I checked, doing some work on the Swedish reef there.

 

[user 4386]

I suspect it was the road north through Yarrambat and was the Golden Stairs mine west of the road- now under a housing development (the Plenty River is on the west side of the hill). I used to go underground there when it was operating - Bill Wallace (deceased) and Stan Bone (still alive and well around St Andrews last I checked, doing some work on the Swedish reef there.

Slight correction - it is called Yan Yean road and the poppet head was really on the Golden Crown or Golden Gate. There had been a Golden Steps north of it but no poppet head. The Golden Stairs was a different mine run by Bill Clayton and worked by an adit in the gully well to the south, but he was mostly working the Golden King south of North Oatlands road using windlasses not a proper poppet head (the road being the lease boundary). The poppet head on the Golden Crown has been moved to the local museum. Bill Clayton and Bill Wallace did not get along (something to do with mistreatment of a borrowed horse) and one would wait until the other went underground before blasting (the workings were connected).

 

[Conrad]

Slight correction - it is called Yan Yean road and the poppet head was really on the Golden Crown or Golden Gate. There had been a Golden Steps north of it but no poppet head. The Golden Stairs was a different mine run by Bill Clayton and worked by an adit in the gully well to the south, but he was mostly working the Golden King south of North Oatlands road using windlasses not a proper poppet head (the road being the lease boundary). The poppet head on the Golden Crown has been moved to the local museum. Bill Clayton and Bill Wallace did not get along (something to do with mistreatment of a borrowed horse) and one would wait until the other went underground before blasting (the workings were connected).

View attachment 4602

I’m pretty sure the mine at my friends place was on the other side of Yan Yean Rd. Maybe too small to be marked in the geovic map?

 

[Conrad]

I guess another point worth making is that a lot of mines (including in Australia) only contain very minor quartz veining within the ore.
Often if an ore body gets metamorphosed the original ore changes to new minerals and quartz veins disappear by chemical reaction. Hemlo in Canada is a multi-million ounce example - this is ore.

View attachment 4525
Big Bell near Cue is another example (2.6 million oz) - I don't remember any distinct quartz vein there. President Herbert Hoover used to be the mine manager and a member of Cue municipal council (as he was also at Sons of Gwalior mine at Leonora, 5.5 million oz production so far, where his old house is perched on the edge of the open cut). The ore body there is a mica schist with just quartz stringers. Also Challenger in a quartz-feldspar-kyanite-garnet pegmatite (i.e. granite vein) in South Australia (750,000 oz). Others of this type are being found in the Wheat Belt of WA.

Also a small garnet rock gold body without quartz near Bathurst.

View attachment 4554

And of course Olympic Dam copper ore body has produced millions of ounces of gold from ore with no quartz veins - a breccia ore body of just iron oxide and copper and iron sulphides. Sulphide ore bodies weather to iron oxide (gossan) at surface.

View attachment 4547

Australia's largest gold mine, Boddington (at least 10 million oz so far, another 10 m oz still unmined) original mined gold from a bauxite laterite at surface (with coarse gold). It also produces copper.

View attachment 4550
Here is another type of sulphide-rich gold ore with no defined quartz veins (in granite from Canada but similar to Cadia and others in NSW).

View attachment 4548

Because gold can form nuggets in laterite soil above any of these types of ore body with negligible or no quartz, it is important to be aware of them.

Is the gold visible in the challenger pegmatite? How is it distributed in the pegmatite? Is it associated particularly with the quartz, or one of the other minerals or not?

 

[user 4386]

I’m pretty sure the mine at my friends place was on the other side of Yan Yean Rd. Maybe too small to be marked in the geovic map?

There was a single shaft of the Pioneer mine on the Pioneer road (you can just see it on the RHS of the map). However it lacked any headframe (I know because I very nearly fell down the open shaft one day because I did not see it). I knew the area very well from about 1962 onwards.