Nymagee Copper Mine, Nymagee, Mouramba Co., New South Wales, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Nymagee Copper Mine	Mine (Abandoned)
Nymagee	Town
Mouramba Co.	County
New South Wales	State
Australia	Country

This page is currently not sponsored. Click here to sponsor this page.

PhotosMapsSearchMineralogy

A former underground copper mine with shafts and opencuts.
Located approximately 72 km South-East of Cobar.

Copper was discovered here by two stockmen, Henry Manly and Bryson in September 1876. Within twelve months Cobar mining investor Russell Barton purchased the mine and formed the Nymagee Copper Mining Company Ltd operating the mine from 1880-1892. Initial mine managers were John Wills 1880, Francis Jolly 1881, William Blakemore 1886.

In 1883 the mine employed 500 men, however low copper prices saw production decline and by 1889 the workforce was 40 men. Between 1880-1887 the mine produced 10 400 tons of copper from 81 585 tons of ore. Operations ceased in 1892 and the company was liquidated.

September 1896 the mine was purchased by the Great Cobar Mining Syndicate. They installed a new plant to more cheaply process the ore. In 1906 the mine was sold to British based Nymagee Copper Limited. Another new plant was installed but operations ceased again in 1908. In 1912 British based Mouramba Copper Mines Limited purchased the mine however smelting only lasted four months. Low copper prices, droughts and transport costs were to blame. From 1880-1917 the mine had produced 24 800 tons of copper mined to a depth of 800 feet.

From photographs (England et al., 2019) the site contains two shafts, concrete tanks used in the 1950s to extract copper, piles of scrap iron, brick smelter ruins, Blackstone oil engine and Ingersoll Rang compressor, old slag floor, crinoid stem fossils in limestone brought from off site as part of the processing, azurite and malachite veins in slate, interesting slag patterns and geology on show, some minor ruins from the mine managers house and processing plant, a deep narrow open cut, and tailings. It is a prime candidate for a Peak Hill type tourist attraction with information signage. Mining is unlikely to re-start at the site. It would give people a reason to travel out to Nymagee, that barely survives above the level of a ghost town at present.

The deposit is hosted by quartz turbidites with siltstone and shale of the Mouramba Group. Sulphide mineralisation is massive with disseminated halo. There is a surface 15 metre depth leached oxide zone with a 37 metre depth supergene zone below this. Pyrrhotite is leached to 60-90 metres from the surface. Ore is found as pyrrhotite-chalcopyrite; sphalerite-pyrrhotite-galena; or simply pyrrhotite. One source states there are six ore bodies being a main lens, three on the footwall in the north and one in the south. All plunge 60 degrees SSE. Another states there are three named West, East and Main. The East zone is Cu rich; West zone Zn-Pb rich and Main central zone has both Cu rich shoots, and Zn-Pb-Cu shoots. The deposit is complex in form with mineralisation found as stockworks, tabular bodies, massive, disseminated blebs and stringers, or elongated steep pitching lenses. Gilligan in the references gives a long list of species, without corresponding information of where each sits in the geological structure.

A visit to the dumps in 2004 identified abundant massive cerussite with some small blocky iron oxide coated crystals. This was sometimes associated with powdery yellow plumbojarosite. A 2019 visit by the NSW Mineralogical Society found very micro specimens of azurite and malachite in small vughs to 1 cm, as stout transparent and fibrous malachite crystals amongst bladed azurite.

Mineral List

41 valid minerals.

Rock Types Recorded