Black Quartz in reefs, oldtimers called it MAGPIE QUARTZ

I first heard of black quartz at the gold shop in Ballarat where there was a big interest in black quartz from the Bendigo area. Anyway out in the bush a big tree had fallen over on a bank and exposed a reef with multiple quartz veins with sandstone one side and slate on the other.
The first crushing about a kilo of the white quartz with green slate veins showed some pyrite and very minor gold.
The next samples I got were a combination of black and white quartz, reading a mining article that was written around the turn of the century the old timers called this magpie quartz and had an interest in this but no further info was given. what ever turned the quartz black would be some inclusion of some mineral but don't know what it would be, another example of another colour would be quartz becomes amethyst when iron is present under certain conditions.
Is there a geologist on board?
Haven't crushed the black stuff yet and whether this is an indication of a promising reef I don't know.
Does anyone have any knowledge of magpie quartz?
cheers Tezz

Its not slate its black glassy quartz, if its not a mineral that has turned the quartz black it could be during high temperatures when slate has turned into quartz (metamorphism) and mixed in with the white Quartz.
Tezz

Hi Tezz , I believe you are correct that the quartz forms in the slate and eventually transforms it to quartz , it seems the magpie quartz is the unfinished process
"As at the Birthday and the South Birthdav mines, the angles formed in the irregular descent of the lodes have fractures sroing out east, or west, as the case may be. These fractures have been filled with quartz. No doubt many patches of coarse gold are to be found in the wing and fin " makes " thus formed, at points where they intercept the drainage from slate. This class of quartz forma­tions is known in Maldon and in Stawell 'as " magpie," on account of the quartz veins and country showing a medley of black and white. In some mines the veins are wide and regular in their radiation, and in others small and irregular in their lines, and like a network through the country. In more than one mine I have visited this "magpie" class of lode structure proved to be rich in gold. There is much of this " magpie " class of ore in all of the Berringa mines. So far. however, it has not attracted much attention. The William's Fancy area is nearly identical with the longitudinal areas of the disturbance responsible for the thickening of this system of fracture. To all appearance there are two runs of wide " makes " in it, pitching south in parallel lines. "
I had this paragraph saved in my research file because it related to what I was seeing ,can;t remember were I found it but
hope it helps , luckyb

G'day LUCKY B

Maybe here, http://www.farlang.com/gemstones/bradford-berringa/page_013 Looks like a book called "Beringa Gold Fields"

cheers dave

Cheers Lucky B and Dave,
This vein is running N-W and could run into the Birthday Tunnel Mine which is on my land or Dip or could be an off shoot of the main reef, the Birthday adit is to dangerous to enter now to have a look due to a rock fall, some of the sandstone blocks that has fallen from the ceiling weigh over a ton.
The last ore that came out was dumped, most of it was barren or low grade but did pick up a few specimens with that olive green greasy slate running through the quartz, usually is fractured along those lines and is easily parted,
when the slate is removed the quartz has a honey comb crusty appearance, this is where gold, pyrite and galena can be seen, quite common in these type of specimens is that the gold has formed around or on top of the pyrite and galena crystals, so I'm assuming the gold came after the sulphides had formed and had an attraction to them.
cheers
Tezz

Tezz

Do you know Toby he lives just south of the school and has been crushing stone off the mullock heaps from the mines there for awhile now and no doubt could tell you affair bit about the country rock.

I have some nice carbon/gold specimens (Graphite-Quartzite’s) that have come from Berringa as well as Castlemaine and are only found at great depth and this is where it comes from
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The lodes were in part well-laminated and usually had well defined walls Black slates, carbonaceous or Graphitic, were noticed in the vicinity of the lodes. The faults were either "breaks “of the cross-course type (right hand displacement) or "slides," that is almost horizontal faults intersection the strata nearly at right angles.

In the Birthday Tunnel mine an "indicator" was worked at its intersection with the lode, with varying results. Carbonaceous and Graphitic slates were noticed in the vicinity of the payable quartz, but no evidence was found to the connect them with the gold content.
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I hope you’re not planning to explore any of the local mines as you have said they are not safe I can relate to the mine you have raised and as with many of the others. Would I be right to say that the concrete cap mine is over your back fence as the main shaft & Adit has been cap off and if it was not for the water it would have been as rich as the old post office mine in Ballarat.

If you are on the eastside of the main road then you will have no trouble finding shallow alluvial gold Berringa has been a special place for me from the very first time I started Prospecting and did spend countless hours-days-weeks in the mining records office researching Berringa and the surrounding areas of the Enfield State forest.

Changed my mind lets go down this one just a couple of buckets a day will be fine

Detrackozi,
I know Toby he was supposed to come around and see my hammer mill as he has found a promising find on his property.
Our property is on the Eastern side of the main rd.
The no1 level on the eastern side down in Kangaroo gully is where the rock fall is, the entrance is still open, on the western side the property owner can't find the entrance so must have been filled in. The capping over the main shaft is not visible due to dirt over the concrete. All that is left are the brick ruins, boiler and foundations where the poppet head was and the ruins on the other side of the gully where the crusher was.
Looking at the elevation of the mine and main shaft with all those levels would be great to get down but would be nearly impossible plus bad air.
As far as alluvial gold down in that gully goes one major problem is water and probably gold is in clay as the Chinese were down there with puddlers, There is still a lot of crusher sand lying in that gully even though they took away thousands of tons to Ballarat, so I guess the sand would be over the top of the old diggings, down the gully further the diggings appear but been down there 3 times with detector with no luck. Been down there in winter as well and still no water, need a major flood I think, Actually I do have water in a dam down there and its all sand in that spot. Those gold/graphite specimens, did you go into a mine to get them or get them on a mullick heap? I would be interested to see photos of them if have any.
Thanks for the info and pictures,
cheers Tezz

The rusty layers at the top of the specimen (oxidised pyrite), is where the gold seems to be, this is the last piece of laminated quartz I have so won't break it up.
Tezz

WOW,
       Me and a mate found some magpie quartz on saturday! In a gold field and exposed by a flooded gully!
My mate did say it looked interesting, may have to go back and dolly some samples?

Berringa, i went to school with a mate who's Grandfather was mine manager at the kangaroo Mine, think he did some work at the Birthday Tunnel as well.
He also spent a few years at the Dempsey Mine at Gaffney's Creek. He passed away in the 1970's from exposure to quartz dust in the lungs!

yep, a geo on board but just joined and lost his lengthy reply and disheartened - and gave up trying to load images
So testing

OK - Detrackozi" photo is classic magpie quartz - laminated quartz. White is quartz, black is slate, the blacker the slate the better for gold. Black is graphite, degraded pyrobitumen etc. We think it extracted gold from ore solutions.
Don't believe "beaten by water" - they could beat anything in a hard-rock mine, although wet flowing sand did cause some mines to close for safety reasons. Mines usually closed for lack of ore in sight - often though they paid high dividends and did not allocate enough capital in reserve to do lengthy further exploration when the ore in sight ran out - but if you reckon they would leavve much in the face you probably believe in the tooth fairy.
Don't take chances - a geo mate was gassed last year, another in Laverton. Methane (marsh gas) can explode in a naked flame but the deadly killer is carbon monoxide (not only displaces oxygen but 4% in the air makes you dizzy, 14% and you are dead). You start be feeling hot (had it happen). Hence the canaries. The "hanging" can become loose overhead on a single shift - the mine captains used to bar down any dull-sounding blocks they hit with an iron bar at the start of each shift (dull means not firmly attached to the rock above). I have narrowly escaped a few times in opoerating mines - I can't imagine going down without a mining engineer barring down - just because an adit is horizontal people think it makes it safe! And it wasn't safe then - 30 deaths a month on the mines in Ballarat!
Be wary of assuming all indicators had gold - some were called that simply because they indicated where to go (e.g. the Pencilmark at Ballarat East simply told the old-timers they were a certain distance from The Indicator, which was the place the gold hung out - nothing on the Pencilmark indicator (Pencilmark Lane is Named after it (source of this info the author Mark Twain). I even have gold that came from under people's houses (carbide lamps and felt berets in those days still - I was a kid riding my bike and they would take me down or climb down the ladders alone if I came after shift began.
Dempsey is being re-opened i think - I used to go down some of those mines when still worling (eg A1, Morning Star) including some now in the Melbourne suburbs with houses built on 650 sq m blocks over them. SOme of those mining thaen are still around (Stan Bone of Kinglake - has Sweduish/Buck at One tree Hill still I think.)
Can't read the rerst to answer (off screen)

Having a lot of trouble with this site (and my typos)!

CORRECTIONS

Dempsey is being re-opened i think - I used to go down some of those mines when still worling (eg A1, Morning Star) including some now in the Melbourne suburbs with houses built on 650 sq m blocks over them. I even have gold (e.g wire gold in quartz) that came from under people's houses, e.g. Wattletree Road Hurstbridge, main road through Yarrambat, Diamond Creek (carbide lamps and felt berets in those days still - I was a kid riding my bike and they would take me down or climb down the ladders alone if I came after shift began. There were mines around Manningham_Thompson's road ( a mine disaster there with water rushing in). Some of those mining them are still around (Stan Bone of Kinglake - has Swedish/Buck at One tree Hill still I think).

Other errors - I mean carbon dioxide not monoxide (monoxide is more deadly but rare - it is in exhausts and some heaters).

after all these lost emails (just lost another) i only know get a message that new members cannot post emails for 7 days . So this geo wasted hours - won't be back

G'day goldrox welcome to the forum, I hope you decide to stay.

Sorry your having so much trouble with your posts getting lost in cyber space, try typing your post in word or something similar, then just copy and paste from that into you post here, that way it wont time out on you.

As for inserting pictures etc you can just wait the amount of time or send the pictures to one of the mangers (names in blue) and ask them to insert your pictures in the post.

there is not much other way around this in the early stages on a new membership, sorry mate.

cheers dave
ADMIN

I am posting out from Word - it simply will not "Send" and once I move away it is gone - but now that I know that of course I have been using word. No good, can't post even pure text.

The problem is that initially I didn't get the message that tells the real reason for losing everything "New members are not allowed to post external links or emails for 7 days". I wanted to help you guys when I saw your questions when googling, had to join (which is to be expected) but cannot now answer, Off to northastern Siberian gold now, can't wait the 7 days just to post text.

Lost another email

Another mine at Hill Street North Balwyn, another near Glen Iris, Kangaroo Grounds, Greensborough, South Morang, Yarra Glen, Christmas Hills, lots around Ferny Creek, Menzies Creek and Emerald, Packenham and Berwick, Frankston, Whittlesea, another at Sunbury and a few at Darraweit Guim.  Most of these latter only worked early and not in my lifetime. Gold turns up on central city building sites. Most were small (Diamond Creek mine produced 1.6 tonne gold and Warrandyte was significant).

Forgot to mention that when I mentioned flowing sand it was in alluvial mines not hard-rock mines (22 dead at New Australasia at Creswick, many at the McEvoy mine Eldorado; that at the Borondoora mine near Templestowe was hard-rock - the treatment plant wall is still there - gold was struck near the Burke Road bridge when putting in the eastern freeway. Dead common - the problem is the amount of rock mixed with it :-(

TESS -
your black quartz photos are not Magpie Quartz and possibly aren't even black (sticking my neck out).  Black quartz is mostly caused by numerous inclusions of fluid, hydrocarbons, graphite, microfractures (such things as fractures and fluid inclusions refract light passing through) or radiation damage (rare in Victoria except in granite areas like Strathbogies where perfectly terminated single black crystals tens of cm in diameter are found - granites have more uranium). However I am suspicious that if you crack a tiny grain only off your "black" quartz you will find it completely transparent and colourless - that you are looking at a light effect because of its transparency, unlike typical milky-white vein quartz.
Manganese gives amethyst its purple colour I think - I think rose quartz gets its colour from iron - opaline silica's colours are simply a refraction effect around its tiny spheres, chrysoprase's green is nickel.
I think you said about galena etc having an attraction for gold.  Gold travels in ore fluids dissolved as a sulphur compound.  When the ore fluid is reduced by contact with carbon e.g. in black slate) the gold-sulphur ion breaks down to give metallic gold,and the fluid releases hydrogen sulphide (rotten egg gas).  However at the same time iron in the solution bonds with the sulphur and precipitates pyrite, lead precipitates as galena (lead sulphide), zinc as sphalerite, copper and iron as chalcopyrite. Silver tends to go into what we call "solid solution" as a gold silver alloy (hence golds varying "fineness", except if there is a lot in which case we get things like silver sulphide (argentite) - e.g. Glen Wills, and at St Arnaud (St Arnaud started off as a hard-rock silver-mining field). So all these minerals tend to occur at the same place.

LUCKY B - the quartz does not transform the slate in Magpie quartz - each white layer is a separate injection of ore fluid into the slate to give a quartz vein, each one at a different time (we call it crack-seal texture).
Magpie quartz is very important and commonly forms the main type of gold ore in Victorian fields - see Rod's photos at to see what typical Ballarat East ore looks like - I have broken up the link so it is not rejected [deleted]
Forget the "drainage" ideas - that would be ?Bradford - there was only one Geological Survey geologist who used to say such things, even his contemporaries disagreed - he just had the advantage of a government post and felt free to push his own barrow because he could write what he wished (we would certainly consider it pure nonsense).

Pity I lost the email that I spent an hour on - telling you how to use magpie quartz and indicator slates to prospect

it is the damned link and even making it an invalid link wont let it be presented _ iread it litewrally that emails could not be presented
A:**B.mrgraphics.com.au*clients*aigsamplingcd*links*presentations*2-Rod%20Fraser.pdf
*= /
A=http
B=www

Success!! I did want to at least answer your specific questions

And thanks Dave - but I have to get off to Kalgoorlie then China then northeastern Siberia (Kolyma goldfield) - was in Siberia last July-August , late September Canadian Rockies, all of October SW USA especially around Carlin. Might be getting long in the tooth for this. I will check in when I return as I am a gold geo and know a little about gold, and the carbon/magpie quartz is a big issue, as are carbon-rich indicators

sorry to spam but must go - that "black" quartz is probably clear quartz as I said, and the dark colour is from manganese oxide coating fractures in it (my guess)

Gday Goldrox
Sounds like you've got a cracker job and know what you're talking about. Hope ya hang around the forum.
cheers
Brett

Will do mate - got over frustration. Must go.

For those that do not know, Tezz that started this post past away some 6 weeks back from a Heart attack.

Rest in peace mate you will be missed by all on here and around home. My thought will be with you each time I visit your great little town for a swing

That's very sad news, condolences to your family & friends.

regards dave

Sorry to hear that - RIP Tess

Got some Kolyma gold photos if interested - how does one upload?

Damm that's terrible news, I really liked Tezz. RIP mate .

I wish Tezz an eternity of "Golden Days" our time in this life is far too short.

When I saw this thread renewed I immediately thought I wonder what Tezz has been up to, RIP "Brother"

Sad news
I always loved his posts too..

Like this one
https://golddetecting.forumotion.net/t15439-fools-gold-with-gold-and-other-sulphides#140956

RIP Tezz
Our condolences to his family & friends.

Regards Jen & Mike