Sand Queen mines, Comet Vale, Menzies Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Sand Queen mines	Group of Mines
Comet Vale	- not defined -
Menzies Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

Includes the following mines: Sand Queen (currently - 2006 - an active mining area), Gladsome, Sand Prince, Sand King, Sand Duke.



The Sand Queen Mine is approxmately 100 kilometres north of Kalgoorlie, and can be seen next to the Goldfields Highway. Sand King, Prince, Duke, and Gladsome Mines are within a few hundred metres of the Sand Queen Mine. As of 2012, the mine was still active. The present mining company has re-named one of the areas Sand George.

The Sand Queen and Gladsome Mines together historically produced 185 372oz of Au. The Western Australian Museum has a number of specimens from the mine, many from a feature at Sand Queen called The Vugh, which was mined out by 1918. This was a vertical compression zone in the main reef, which contained well crystallised specimens at the 450ft level. This included crystalline masses and druses of calcite and gypsum, together with prehnite, analcime and sulphides.

The Vugh contained many tonnes of iceland spar to 15cm; frosty white to greyish crystalline calcite sometimes associated with greenish prehnite analcime microcrystals and sulphides; frosty greyish crusts of analcime; colourless transparent selenite gypsum as cleavage masses some with moveable gas bubbles; cubo-octahedral pyrite crystals; 5mm black sphalerite crystals. Other species from the mines include well crystallised stilbite, bright yellow pucherite, native gold, wulfenite, terminated hexagonal quartz prisims. We can only hope more areas like The Vugh come to light from recent mining activity, and they find their way to the collectors market. None have so far.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References