Lake Cooper Quarry, Corop, Victoria

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...

Flinders, Victoria

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...

Demon’s Bluff, Anglesea, Victoria

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...

Coimadai Antimony Mine, Victoria

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,...

Castlemaine, Victoria

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...

Camperdown, Victoria

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

Bonney Jean Track, Daisy Hill, Victoria

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)....

Alfredton, Ballarat, Victoria

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...

Miscellaneous Victorian Deposits

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

Kara Mine, Hampshire, Tasmania

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,...

Barite in Tasmania

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....

Avebury Nickel Mine, Zeehan, Tasmania

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...

Adelaide Mine, Dundas, Tasmania

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,...

Miscellaneous South Australian Deposits

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...

The Mt. Biggenden Gold and Bismuth Mine, Queensland

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....

The Elura Orebody, New South Wales

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...

Broken Hill Region, New South Wales

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...