Beringa Gold Fields

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		It is clear that the mining of the future is to be very different from the mining of the past. A study of cause and effect in relation to the application of force to matter—that is, fracture structure—and how force has arranged its " settling pits" of reception for gold and sulphides is to play a very important part in our mining. When its significance is fully recognised, Rokewood Junction, and, indeed, many other places in this State, will be centres of industrial activity. The greatest depth reached at the Mac's Lucky mine was about 240 feet from the surface, the last 75 feet having been sunk by a no-liability company. This company made no effort worth noticing. Not meeting with rich stone at once, it stopped work. All the stone mined by the original party averaged, it is said, 2 ozs. per ton. The structure of the lode here is somewhat as in Fig. 5. A little to the north of the Long Thought Of area a mine has been opened by Mr. Harrison. Here a 10-head mill is busy treating quartz-vein ore from a main line of fracture in gold-slate. There are many drains from this slate passing into and through the veins. The width of the system of fracture is about 50 feet. One vein of quartz has been followed, as it crosses the area of fracture. At noints on

	this vein where one mam drain in slate passes into it, crushmgs yielding as high as 2 ozs. to the ton have been mined. The structure of this vein shows plainly that its dip, being in places more than 45 deg. from the horizontal, has taken the gold from the line of contact with the slate drain, down to situations where a less nearly vertical dip of the quartz has formed a sort of bench. (See Fig. 6).



	Going north from Harrison's mine, ranges of quartz-lode country are crossed. A little surface mining has been done in some of the outcrops,, but nothing worth noticing. A mile or two further north is Berringa. Just south of the Birthday group of mines are a few " mullock " heaps, resulting from puny efforts to locate the Birthday run of golden stone. In Berringa proper there are five mines being worked. These are known, from the north going south, as the Birthday Tunnel, the Kangaroo, the William's Fancy, the Birthday, and the South Birthday. All are working on quartz, formations belonging to one system of lodes. These were opened first, in the "fifties," it is said, the golden nature of their outcrop having attracted the early diggers. During those times, many gold-bearing formations

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