Marble Bar, East Pilbara Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Marble Bar	Town
East Pilbara Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

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'The gold miner's career is invariably punctuated by prodigal excesses, hard drinking, gross immorality, and the habitual use of indescribely horrible language. I emphatically affirm no-where amongst the members of the great Anglo-Saxon family are to be found men of coarser fibre. Possessing the morals of apes, they have a profound contempt for morality, decency, and religion. It is impossible to speak in terms of sufficient severity of the foul, profane, and obscene expressions which assail the ear at every turn'

Physician J.A. Langdon in 1900 was less than impressed when he visited Marble Bar. Do not even get him started on gold miner drinking and their 'immoral' sexual relations with aboriginal women. The odd four letter word these days does not put off people visiting this area to go fossicking.

Jasper locality (the "marble" is in fact jasper). There is a $10,000 fine for removing material from the location, but a public fossicking site is nearby (Kim Macdonald information).

Gold was discovered near Marble Bar in 1891 (see Stray Shot Mindat locality), and a town gazetted by 1893. In 1891 there were 5,000 gold miners on the fields. The Ironclad Hotel in the main street was built in the 1890's, and was named by American miners, as it reminded them of Ironclad ships in the United States.

The best time to visit is the Australian winter months. It can get very hot in Marble Bar in summer. Across 1923-1924, the town set a world record for the most consecutive days over 100 degrees F (37.8 degrees C)- 160 days.

Facilities are limited and you need to be self sufficient with accommodation. Population 208 (2011).

Just out of town is a jasper bar which is the town's main attraction, and the geologic feature it is named after. A short drive south of the town is a small mineral specimen museum. Metal detecting can be undertaken at the Marble Bar Common, an area leased by the local community for tourists. It is one of the few in Western Australia, and shows an enlightened approach to tourism other towns should follow.

The area is very scenic, with desert mountain country, gorges and waterholes. Some of the areas, even near the town can be remote. Apart from the jasper fossicking site and the 'Common' near the town, there are no public fossicking sites in the region. Location details can be vague, and please keep in mind lease requirements, and fossicking licence rules. Beyond this the area provides the opportunity to explore where few fossickers have trodden before.

The Marble Bar area has produced over 1.50 tonnes of gold, mainly before 1950. Gold has come from 0.15 to 2 metre thick quartz veins with a shallow westerly dip. The veins are in a north-south trending unit of carbonated chloritic schist of the Duffer Formation. The veins are associated with dolerite sills, with gold restricted to the vein margins. Unoxidised ores contain pyrite, chalcopyrite and galena.

Satellite images for the Marble Bar area will often show large burned sections. These are sometimes caused by people with metal detectors, as burning the spinifex makes it easier. These fires often get out of control burning large areas, and in part makes people conducting this hobby unwelcome in certain sections of gold fields communities.

Commodity List

This is a list of exploitable or exploited mineral commodities recorded from this region.

Mineral List

Mineral list contains entries from the region specified including sub-localities

59 valid minerals.

Rock Types Recorded

Rock list contains entries from the region specified including sub-localities