something i cam across on the hills surrounding Gormanston in Tasmania i believe it is a large nugget of native copper just wondering if anyone has come across it in Australian sites before
Native copper does occur there at the Iron Blow etc - but is hat what it is? No need to hammer it just test how soft it is with the point of a pocket knife,
It's very similar to a few chunks I picked up in the NT some years ago at an old copper mine not far from the Daly River.
It was a very productive mine back in the day with it's own smelter, but during WW2, the Japanese bombers that were hitting Darwin were using the chimney stack as a marker to start their turn and attack from the south. After this was discovered by the Australian forces defending Darwin, Army engineers were dispatched to the mine site to destroy the chimney and this prevented the Japs from making any more bombing raids from the south.
Sorry about the poor quality images, they were taken with an old 35mm camera and scanned many years later. As seen in the pics, there was still a lot of ore at the mine and probably still is.