Golden Point Mine, Macraes Mine, Macraes (Macraes Flat), Otago Region, New Zealandi

Regional Level Types
Golden Point Mine	Mine
Macraes Mine	Mine
Macraes (Macraes Flat)	Town
Otago Region	Region
New Zealand	Country

Abandoned gold and scheelite mine.

In many countries it is impossible to get near a large scale active gold mine, however at Macraes you can drive right through the centre of operations to the historic Golden Point battery. The company that operates the Frasers open pit and underground mine next to the battery runs public tours also.

The Golden Point stamp battery is the only complete, still operational, historic stamp battery remaining on its original site in New Zealand. It was operational from 1905 into the 1950's. The area also includes Callery's House, Callery's battery building, two mud brick dwellings, hopper, and iron shed containing metal relics. Interpretive panels explain the site.

The mine opened in the deep gully in Deepdell Creek in 1889, and then became the property of the Golden Point Mining Company, until it was liquidated. The Donaldson brothers purchased the claim, and mined successfully until they sold the claim to a Christchurch syndicate in 1912. Donaldson's battery worked until 1930, then in 1953 it was sold for scrap metal. During this period the mine produced around 15 000 ounces of gold, and 800 tonnes of scheelite.

In 1905, the Golden Point battery opened on the eastern side of Deepdell Creek. Meanwhile the Maritana Company erected two batteries on the western side of the creek, but due to the low grades of gold, this closed in 1906. It lay idle until 1911, then the batteries were used to process scheelite.
The Callery brothers used the Maritana battery from 1912, then purchased the whole lease in the late 1920's, forming the Round Hill Mining Company in 1932. See Round Hill pit Mindat locality for more information.

The Hyde-Macrae Shear Zone at this point is 100 metres thick, bounded by a Hanging Wall, 10 metres thick, and Footwall shear up to 5 metres thick. The shears show as dark grey, fine grained micaceous graphitic schist, with local fault altered rocks, particularly near the top of the Hanging Wall shear. Silicification, shearing intensity, brecciacation, and quartz veining are all highly variable. The zone contains a network of anatomising shears up to 15 metres thick, with no set dip or trends. There are zones of sheeted veins, the individual veins within this discontinuous, but with a steep north dip, and striking north-east. The quartz is massive milky white, to finely laminated milky quartz, and dark grey quartz, with rare scheelite.

Specifically the Golden Point workings contain four shear structures, 2-10 metres thick, the lodes dipping 10-15 degrees east. The lodes consist of quartz veins, and quartz breccia lodes, anatomising east-west, and north-south, with lodes thickening on the convergences.

Historic lodes were called Home Reef, Deep Reef, and Low Reef. A pit was developed which accessed the historic workings, closed in 2002 after all the available ore left had been obtained. The pit was partially re-filled.

A report was found from a collector who visited the site before the underground workings were destroyed, the area surrounded by an industrial scale mine, and the historic section taken over by DOC. He found the dumps at Golden Point held little of interest, with minor pyrite in the host blue phyllite and occasional quartz lump. Poor quality scheelite and arsenopyrite was found further down Deep Dell Creek. (Auton, 1997) then fell down a hole and landed on a sugary brown to black rhodonite. Exploration of old tunnels (we do not recommend this for safety reasons) found scheelite with UV lamps shining back pale blue. He noted some of it was covered by crystalline pharmacosiderite. Scorodite was found 550 feet down another drive as a seam 36 cms thick of breccia quartz, limonite, calcite, epsomite, gypsum, and minor scorodite, in the host blue phyllite.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References