Euro Gold Mine (Sterling; Central Euro), Laverton, Laverton Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Euro Gold Mine (Sterling; Central Euro)	Mine
Laverton	- not defined -
Laverton Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

The mine is named after a species of kangaroo. It is 20 kilometres south of Laverton, bordering the west side of the Mount Weld Road.

Newman and party first found alluvial gold at a nearby site to the south in 1895. London Company W.A. Goldfields Ltd, sank some trial shafts and at the same time erected a 10 head battery. They found little gold, and the battery never got to crush any ore before they abandoned the site. Investors in London lost their money. It was a common occurrence for the time.

A short time later some prospectors arrived from an alluvial show to the north. They were unable to dryblow due to rainy weather, and decided to sink a shaft instead in an area just north of the prior location. They struck gold.

G.W. Hall of Sons of Gwalia fame inspected the prospect a few months later and was impressed enough to take an option over it. He was state manager for the London and Westralian Mines and Finance Agency, and raised 54 000 pounds capital through floating a new company called the Euro Gold Mines Ltd. No less than a 40 stamp battery was installed with cyanide vats.

Things went well for a while. Gold was being achieved at 14 dwt. Then the values decreased, no development work had been done, the directors took fright, and it all folded in 1903. The Battery was purchased by Bewick Moreing and Co, then transferred to the Lancefield mine.

In May 1904, the mine was taken up by a syndicate of working miners, and they carted several good crushings through to the Laverton state battery. The original company achieved 18 000 ounces from its operations. The second lot of miners got 7000 ounces. After this time, the mine was the haunt of the occasional prospector, and a few small crushings over several decades.

The mine has a JORC Indicated resource of 646 000 tonnes of ore at 1.7 g/t yielding 35 400 ounces of gold, and a JORC Inferred resource of 52 800 tonnes of ore at 1.5 g/t yielding 2600 ounces.

A modern abandoned elongated open pit remains at the site from recent decades. The mining company at the time called the pit Sterling, although it is commonly known as Euro. The original Euro underground workings is a historic shaft just north of the main pit. It consists of stone walling, timber, as a three compartment incline shaft with workings underground at four levels to the south south-east of the shaft. Small historic pits, the battery foundations and tailings are nearby.

In modern times the site was explored in the 1970's by Anaconda Australia, then it was farmed out to Aztec from 1983 to 1985. Ashton Group 1987 to 1993, Dominion 1994 to 1995 and Plutonic from late 1995. Sons of Gwalia purchased the mine in 1998. The source states the modern company who developed the Sterling pit mined 'colourful peacock feather patterned basalt'. The writer is unsure how to explain the geology of this, but it sounds interesting and pictures would be handy.

The old workings accessed gold hosting quartz veins, with only minor gold in the highly altered and sheared wall rocks. Three set of veining occurs: 1) Quartz veins within the main west shear, the veins plunging gently south. They range up to 1.5 metres thick, of Fe stained, vughy and crystalline quartz, with pseudomorphs after pyrite and chalcopyrite. It was extensively stoped down to 74 metres, and struck for 150 metres 2) thin milky to clear crystalline quartz veins with patchy gold. 3) sub-horizontal quartz veins dipping gently east, striking parallel to the west shear. The quartz is milky and forms in tension fractures from the Footwall of the west shear.

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References