Cole's Find, Wiluna Mining Project, Wiluna, Wiluna Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Cole's Find	Pit (Flooded)
Wiluna Mining Project	Group of Mines
Wiluna	Town
Wiluna Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

Cole's Find was a small but active prospecting area, 15 to 20 kilometres south-west of Wiluna. There are several small prospecting fields hidden in the scrub in the Wiluna district, containing a few historic shafts.

William Cole was a returned soldier from World War One. With finance from the mines department, advice from government geologist Gibb-Maitland, and a mate called Ridley, they headed south-west from Wiluna sometime in 1919 or early 1920. Ridley abandoned the project but Cole persisted and found floaters, then a few days later the source. He took on McHugh as a partner and claimed the reward lease.

This field was particularly active in the mid 1920's, and again early 1930's, but little information could be found beyond this time. It was always a prospecting field, with a constantly changing roll call of prospectors,and changing lease names, and P.A. numbers. Whiteford (surname) is notable as he erected a 3 head battery, which also served the surrounding leases.

In 1920, a government geologist visited the field and provides the most useful information. However, at that stage little work had been done, and he could only describe the surface rocks as a result.

Said to be in hilly country, containing exposed greenstone schist, very weathered and foliated, traversed by veins of silicified and ferruginous rocks, with much cross jointing and very hard. Some of the veins have enough silica to resemble quartzite, whilst others enough limonite to be ironstone lodes. The weathered portion is very soft and contains small lenses of quartz, some of which carry gold.

At the time the leases pegged were called Reward, Barrier, Cromarty East and Sisters. The Reward lease as the original discovery by Cole and McHugh, but little work had been conducted by the time of the visit- a few costeans and potholes on small lenses of quartz not outcropping on the surface. The Barrier lease was owned by F. Mulholland, south-east of the Reward lease, containing prominent outcrops resembling quartzite. A costean and small shaft had been sunk, both showing very low values. The Cromarty East lease was to the south on an area where rich floaters had been found. One costean had been dug showing gold values in the quartz and surrounding soft schist. The Sisters lease was on the southern boundary of Cromarty East. Costeans had been dug showing gold values over a wide width.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References