Home » categories » rare book library » Bradford. The Harrietville Gold-Field.

Harrietville Gold Field

Harrietville Gold Field Page of 28 Harrietville Gold Field Text size:minus plus Restore normal size   Mail page  Print this page
14
the Gun group. Here, also, is a trough in the rock layers associated with dyke material and quartz lodes. Most of the work has been confined to a formation known as the Big Gun Extended, which has been stoped from an intermediate-tunnel level, up the range for about 500 feet to its outcrop, for payable returns. The favoured situation worked was somewhat as in Fig. 9. Works are now being conducted from a lower-level tunnel in search of a lower situation. The situation worked must have been very extensive originally, and probably of the shape shown in the sketch. The average width of stone in the Gun group of mines is about 2 feet, and the yields all through have averaged about 7| dwts. Shallow cross-cuts would do much to show the relationship of the lodes to the slate drainage, and also furnish information as to distances between favoured points.' A 10-head mil],. driven by water power (with, in the height of summer, when the water supply is low, steam power), does the crushing, which, with cyaniding, is said to get a gold abstraction of 80 per cent.
The mines above described are within three miles of the top of Mount St. Bernard, and, as mentioned, near the top of the western branch of the Ovens River. In going east from this to the top part of the eastern branch, the range which terminates at Harrietville is crossed, and on its summit, beside the original track from Harrietville to the Dargo, is the Monarch mine, whose quartz formations are said to be of the saddle type. I could learn nothing concerning the yields from this old mine. The ground is in the possession of the New Options Limited, which has done a lot of work on a formation averaging about 5 feet in width, and underlying to the east. A run of pold was met with at the junction of a layer of gold-slate drainage with the lode line,and pay­able ore was taken out from portion ofthe contact which strikes north - west and south­east. At one point where a bump in the footwall for­med a more nearly hori­zontal re­sistance to the gravity " pull" on the drainage,
a deposit of gold of about 500 ounces was found ; but, of course,. a length of lode immediately under this situation proved to be much poorer in gold. A cross-cut west from the southern end of the gold line would possibly cut other "makes " more nearly in line with the slate drainage from which came the gold met with. Mr. Gribbin is rising on the same line from tunnel works, some hundreds of feet lower, to the east, and he may locate the line of gold there.
Below the Monarch mine, in the valley of the eastern branch of the Ovens, is the Unique mine, where Mr. Howard, an experienced loamer, is.
Harrietville Gold Field Page of 28 Harrietville Gold Field
Table Of Contents bullet Annotate/ Highlight
Bradford. The Harrietville Gold-Field.
Suggested Illustrations
Other Chapters you may find useful
bullet Tag
This Page