Yesterday I was fortunate to be able to visit, and go underground in, a couple of gold mines in the Central Goldfields region of Victoria. One is predominantly slate and the other sandstone. Both have quartz veins rich in gold and sulphide minerals. I have identified pyrite, galena and sphalerite...
Planning a trip to the Land of the Long White Cloud? Want to know where to go to see geological features, museums, etc.? The Geoscience Society of New Zealand has a website with information about GeoTrips that you can make while in New Zealand. A few are virtual trips only...
A Sway created sometime back from a presentation that I gave. See also…
Greenockite is fairly common in Australian lead-zinc orebodies, but generally occurs as a bright yellow coating or crust. Woodlawn produced some of the nicest crystals that have been found, if not a little small. Deep red crystals on orange coatings over an even earlier spherical generation in cavities in sulphide...
The Australian Journal of Mineralogy Index for volumes 1-18 is now available.The index is continually updated, and new versions will be released as more volumes are added.
Due to poor technical performance and under-whelming technical support at bluehost.com, I have moved all of my websites to a new hosting provider. The same domain, crocoite.com applies, but the performance is much much better (as I have already noticed). Please be patient. Although I endeavoured to ensure everything was...
John Cornish outside the Adelaide Mine in 2012. The Adelaide Mine, Dundas, Tasmania, is world-famous for it’s crocoite specimens. But other species also occur. Here’s a few in my collection.
A second one created tonight. This time, one that hasn’t been published anywhere before. The idea just popped into my head!
I first created geology themed cartoons back in the late 1990s in a series called The Fault Line, published in the Mineralogical Society of Tasmania newsletters. Time to bring them into the 21st Century! Intro and exit created through Viddyoze, artwork created with Procreate, video editing Animotica, and music and...
A nice little spiky calcite specimen from the Portland Harbour Trust Quarry, Cape Sir William Grant, Portland, Glenelg Shire, Victoria. There are two generations of calcite as can be seen on some of the terminations where the outer calcite “coat” is missing. The specimen measures 20mm across and is a...
Shifting into my monochrome phase. A photo of magnetite crystals from the Biggenden Mine, Queensland. Photo width is 5mm. A stack of 158 images processed through Zerene Stacker.
Issue 5 of the Monthly Mineral Chronicles is now available on Sorrell Publications.
Issue 4 of the Monthly Mineral Chronicles is now available on Sorrell Publications.
Zeolites of Tasmania, Steve Sorrell, 2003 I need to update this! 15 years ago, my photography skills were not that great, nor was the technology, and there have been many more finds since. Photo: Natrolite, Stanley, Tasmania
Flinders is a well-known collecting locality in southern Victoria, Australia, most notable for its zeolite minerals, particularly gmelinite.This publication explores the minerals that have been found here. You can access here.
Issue 2 and Issue 3 of the Monthly Mineral Chronicles are now available on Sorrell Publications.
Issue 1 of the Monthly Mineral Chronicles is now available on Sorrell Publications.
Each year, Dehne and Maureen McLaughlin head up to the Northern Territory from Tasmania, to mine for azurite sun specimens. And each year, Dehne writes about the progress and finds on theses ventures. He sends that information through to me to upload to Jordi Fabre’s Friends of Minerals Forum. You...
Main Lead is an area north of Beaufort, Victoria. It was the subject of an early gold rush (Fiery Creek) in the mid 1850s. I was fortunate to be able to visit the area today, with the Ballarat Field Naturalists. Old workings from the original gold rush, through to the...
This is the download page for issues of the Australia and New Zealand Micromineral News, a publication for those interested in micromounting or microminerals, and particularly in minerals from this region. In April 2011, a meeting of people interested in microminerals at the Bathurst Gemboree, with representatives from the Australian...
Henderson’s Quarry is a major excavation in volcanic rock on the eastern side of Mount Ngongotaha, near Rotorua on the North Island of New Zealand. Featured image: Henderson’s Quarry, Ngongotaha The quarry is made up of several rock types including pumice, obsidian and rhyolite. Crystalline minerals occur in lithophysal cavities in...
A granite quarry in Victoria’s northwest. Featured image: Schorl tourmaline, Pyramid Hill From Mindat – Two quarries, one abandoned, the other operated by E.B. Mawson and Sons, have been excavated on the low granite knolls south of the main Pyramid Hill peak in the Terricks Range, in northern Victoria. The...
Mooralla has long been a famous collecting area, mainly in lapidary circles, and is renowned for its spectacular specimens of smoky quartz. Lesser known is the occurrence of other forms of quartz, including epimorphs, and a small number of other minerals. Featured image: Smoky Quartz, Mooralla, Victoria The popular smoky quartz...
Lake Cooper Quarry is situated on the western side of the Corop-Heathcote Road, near to the township of Corop in central Victoria. It is a working quarry producing “road metal” from a metabasite (a subaqueous lava flow), part of the Cambrian Heathcote Greenstone Belt. Featured image: Lake Cooper Quarry from...
Flinders is a Dana locality southeast of Melbourne, Victoria, best known for producing large crystals of gmelinite. The basalts are part of the Older Volcanics with a flow near the top of the sequence dated at 42 million years. Zeolites and associated mineralisation occur in vesicles in basalt along the...
The Duke of Cornwall Mine is just outside Fryerstown on the road to Chewton. There are dumps on one side of the road and the ruins of a Cornish Engine House on the other, registered by the National Trust. Featured image: Cornish Engine House Built in 1865, the only alteration...
Vivianite nodules up to 20cm across have been found on the beach west of Anglesea on Victoria’s south coast. These are usually water-rounded dark blue nodules that sometimes have crystal-lined cavities. Featured image: Anglesea Beach, looking towards Demon’s Bluff in the distance It is thought that the nodules formed in...
Coimadai (pronounced come-ida) Antimony mine is on Pyrete Creek, a tributary of Goodman’s Creek, about 15 km NNE of Bacchus Marsh. It consists of two lodes, Draper’s and Bondison’s. The deposits were discovered in 1887 and worked intermittently until 1915, then operated again between 1942 and 1944. Featured image: John Carey...
The Mount Alexander diggings were located in the central goldfields region of Victoria, in and around the present day city of Castlemaine. The site of one of the earliest significant alluvial gold rushes that occurred in Australia during the mid-nineteenth century, they have been called the world’s greatest shallow alluvial...
Camperdown, in Victoria’s Western Districts, is best known for it’s volcanoes and farming. But not for gold. However, the 1900 article below indicates that gold was found in scoria and basalt! Featured image: Zircon, Lake Bullenmerri, Camperdown
According to Wikipedia, gold was reported at Daisy Hill in 1849, two years before the official finding of gold (at Clunes and Warrandyte). There is no mention of Daisy Hill in Brough-Smythe’s “The Gold Fields and Mineral Districts of Victoria” (1869). Featured image: Daisy Hill workings The Gold and Relic Sites...
Alfredton is a suburb on the western side of Ballarat. In June 2013, a new housing subdivision was under development on the western side of Learmonth Street. Excavation had unearthed quite a lot of fresh basalt which had been gathered in piles around the subdivision. It is likely that this...
This is where you can find miscellaneous external articles on Victorian localities… Featured image: Ryan Eagle Pegmatite dykes of the Mount Wills district, northeastern Victoria, Australia, Ryan Eagle
The Minerals of the Kara Mine, Tasmania book (Steve Sorrell and Ralph Bottrill) can be purchased in either paperback or hardback versions from Lulu. Featured image: Andradite, Kara Mine, Tasmania The Kara mineral field is a group of mineralised skarn deposits, mostly worked for magnetite and scheelite, with some minor copper,...
Introduction Barite (barium sulphate) is a fairly common heavy mineral that often occurs in Pb-Zn ore deposits as a gangue mineral, in sedimentary deposits, and rarely in basalts. When found in sufficient quantity, it is mined for it’s barium content. It occurs either in crystalline form, as tabular, prismatic, or...
Featured image: Calcite, Avebury Mine The full text and photos of the minerals from Avebury can be found in Issue 2 of the Australian and New Zealand Mineral Collector magazine. The Avebury area is located approximately 8 km west of Zeehan in western Tasmania, where over the last few years, exploration...
The Adelaide Mine, Dundas, Tasmania, is famous for its world’s best crocoite. Adam Wright and his partners have been operating it for mineral specimen removal for a number of years and have had significant finds in recent years. In particular, the 2010 Pocket, and more recently, the Red River Pocket....
Here are a few external articles on South Australian deposits… Featured image: Old wagon on the edge of the track between Plumbago and Billeroo. Trevor Dart photo. The Billeroo Davidite Deposit, Trevor Dart The Puttapa Zinc Mine, Mark Cole Xenotime Occurrences in the Olary District of South Australia, Trevor Dart
By Eric L Stevens and Steve Sorrell (photos by Steve Sorrell unless otherwise noted) Updated and revised from an article originally published in the Australian and New Zealand Mineral Collector Magazine issue 6, 2008. Featured image: Calcite, Biggenden, Queensland. 4mm FoV. Location The mine is situated 8km WSW of the township...
By Eric von Werstak Feature image: F-6 Freeway at Mount Brown looking north where the vughs appeared. Introduction Mount Brown is situated near Dapto in the Illawarra District of the South Coast of New South Wales. It comprises of sandstones of volcanic derivation and lavas of the Berkeley Volcanics. The rocks crop...
The Elura mine (now known as the Endeavour Mine) near Cobar, New South Wales, was well-known in particular for its native silver and mimetite specimens. This 278 page thesis by Gernot Loidl, is a comprehensive work, looking the regional geology, the characteristics of the Elura orebody, the ore mineralogy and more. Featured...
Broken Hill based Trevor Dart has written a few articles on localities in his region. These include the following ones on Mindat: Rutile in the Broken Hill District, Trevor Dart The Huonville Sphene Pit, Trevor Dart The Often Overlooked Broken Hill Gahnites, Trevor Dart Featured image: The Huonville Sphene Pit. Members...
The late Margaret and Keith Brown of Echuca had many trips through New South Wales and Queensland, collecting minerals themselves, or swapping/purchasing with other mineral collectors. This post highlights specimens from their collection from lesser known localities in New South Wales. Featured image: Apophyllite, Oak Flats, New South Wales BoggabriAn area...
