Lord Brassey Mine Trip

It is hard to believe but Lord Brassey Mine is a world-famous mineral locality.  This former nickel mine is the type locality for heazlewoodite and hellyerite, and the source of many rare minerals, including awaruite, dypingite, retgersite, reevesite, theophrastite and several new, unnamed minerals.  I have absolutely no idea what any of that is but it is what it is.

So as usual we where up before the sun and on our way and it wasn’t long before I had to stop and get a shot of the sunrise.  After I had a play with the camera we where on our way to Waratah to catch up with Bradley & Heidi and Dirk and Michelle.  At this stage for Jacinta and I the weather was looking horrible as we where going to be on the ‘Slug’ and it was raining but by the time we got to our location to unload the bike and beasts it had thankfully stopped.  After some mechanical failure on the ‘Slug’ to start with we eventually got it started and we where off.

This crossing is literally within the first 100m of the start of the track and after this has been negotiated it is only a short drive up a nice steep hill and you are at Lord Brassey Mine.

There are many exotic minerals found in this area but as it has been heavily prospected they are relatively hard to come by but because the names above meant absolutely nothing to any of us we where just happy to go and have a look. The water in the Adit was crystal clear so it made it easy to see the old tram-line in the Adit.  Think this may be Nickel but not 100% sure.  It has a glassy look and texture and a hint of green in it but that could have been something leaching through like this. There wasn’t much in the way of old relics left in the mine but we did come across a newspaper.

Couldn’t find the date on it but I definitely don’t think it is as old as the mine but then again it’s been a hell of a long time since beef has been 89c a kg.

Most likely the old lease holder of the mineAs hard cold and wet the work would have been back in the day in these mines a lot of them in the area’s offer some fantastic views.

From here we head further north to try to find Brassey North mine but had no such luck so we thought we would head back and try to find Fenton’s Knob mine on the Roaring Mag Creek Track.

After crossing a rather sketchy causeway we where off and cruising… At least until we came across this.

But we weren’t going to let this stop us

 

Not long after we negotiated the landslide we got to where Fenton’s Knob Mine was supposed to be and had a look around the area but couldn’t find it so we thought whilst we where in the area we might as well continue up the track to see where it would take us.  After a great little climb we ended up on top of Caudrys Hill and from here you could hear Savage River mine humming away and also had a great view of the Donaldson Ranges and other surrounding mountains.

After taking in the view we decided to head back and load up the vehicles. Then we basically crossed the road and went into the old Hazelwood River Picnic area.  There wasn’t much of a picnic area there but there must have been an old mine or timber mill there as there was an old boiler and foundations in the area.   From here we went into Luina to have a bit of a look as we had received a call to say that the sewage was blocked

and after rendering the job hopeless we decided to just have a look around.

We think this may have been the sewage line from the Cleveland Mine.

Some poor kid left his pushbike behind in the move of the town.  From here we thought it was a good idea to go and have a beer at the Waratah Pub and reminisce on the days activities but not before I could get a photo of the falls with the new camera.

Hope you enjoyed

Cheers

Brendan & Jacinta

Video Here

Thanks to

Bradley & Heidi Horton

Dirk & Michelle Schumann

The First Paragraph has been modified from this site.