Floater Mine (Gilbert Gold Mine), Ravensthorpe, Ravensthorpe Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Floater Mine (Gilbert Gold Mine)	Mine
Ravensthorpe	- not defined -
Ravensthorpe Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

The original gold discovery in the district was at Cocanarup by the Dunn Brothers in 1899. The Floater Reef was next to be discovered shortly after, further east by Kingsmill, Craig, Stephenson and party.

They started mining but abandoned the mine after a year as they did not have the resources to make it profitable. During this period the reef was worked to 24 metres deep, the reef was 1.5 metres wide, and contained coarse gold.

The Gilbert Gold Mining Company took over the lease. In November 1901, the mine manager was J.B. Neale, followed by P.E. Kean. In 1901 it employed forty men. One hundred tonnes of machinery for a ten head battery was shipped from Fremantle. W.J. Littlejohn was responsible for overseeing its erection. Installed was a ten head Frasers and Chambers mill with Wilfley concentrators, a steam winding plant, with water pumped from the Anna Bell Mine 3 kilometres to the south-west. Later two dams were built at the mine. In 1903, an electric lighting plant was installed.

On 26 January 1904. W.J. Littlejohn was made mine manager. The mine temporarily closed in 1904. It appears operational again in 1905. It had the deepest shaft in the district at 107 metres. Here a hard rock bar with no gold was hit. They managed to by-pass this and go down another 9 metres. Rock drills and a compressor plant were now at the mine.

The ore was described as containing tellurides, not dis-similar to the Golden Mile mines at Kalgoorlie.

By 1907, the plant was also processing copper, but the plant and mine closed this year due to low copper prices. While Floater only had a small percentage of copper to gold, this was not the case with many of the mines in the district. Many had used the Floater battery, and as these mines closed, it placed economic strain on the Floater operations.

The battery restarted in 1909, but to only process ore from other mines in the district. Only prospecting work was being undertaken at the Floater Mine, and little mining had taken place over the prior 4 years. Shortly after the battery closed, and the site remained silent for 23 years.

During this intial mining period, the mine obtained 10 000oz of gold from 12 000 tonnes of ore processed.

The Floater Gold Mining Company was ....well floated in London in 1935, however the Southern Progress Company who had options in the mine ran the operations. On November 10 that year a new ten head battery began being installed. The mine had sprung back to life on the back of high gold prices. However there appears to have been an emphasis again on operating the battery for other mines in the area. They were Bulldog, Ellendale, Bridgetown, Jubilee and numerous individual prospectors working the old small gold mines. A cyanide plant was installed to reprocess the sand and slime from the Floater Mine, from the original mining period for gold they missed. The plant had to close a number of times due to lack of water.

The last report of the battery operating was in 1940. One source states in 1947, the mine/battery was closed 'years before'.

The shaft is next to Floater Road, north of the historic Cattlin Creek workings, and about 7 kilometres north of Ravensthorpe. It is on the left side of the road, and surrounded by an ugly barbed-wire fence, to stop the drunk, the foolish, or maybe both from falling in. Nothing remains at the battery site 500 metres south of here other than the stone walls of the mine manager's house.

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