Walhalla is located in South-East Australia, in the region of Gippsland, about 180 kilometres from Melbourne. It is located in the Great Dividing Range, in the steep Stringers Creek valley, approximately four kilometres upstream of the creek's junction with the Thomson River. The area around the town is designated as an historic area, adjoining the Baw Baw National Park.
Walhalla in 1910
Walhalla was founded as a gold-mining community in early 1862 and at its peak home to around 4,000 residents. Today, the town has a population of fewer than 20 permanent residents, though it has a large proportion of houses owned as holiday properties and is popular during holiday periods. The town's name is taken from an early gold mine in the area, named for the German hall of fame, the Walhalla temple (Valhalla from Norse legend).
Major gold strikes on the Jordan River encouraged other prospectors to follow the nearby Thomson River in their search for the valuable metal. A group of four prospectors who had been exploring in creeks flowing into the Thomson River valley found gold in late December 1862. A claim was pegged out and a member of this group, former convict Edward Stringer, registered the claim at the stage post town of Bald Hills, now called Seaton, about the 12th January 1863. Although his party were later posthumously presented with a monetary reward of £100 for the discovery, Stringer was unable to capitalise on his finds, dying in September 1863. After news of the discovery became known, a rush to the creek began and a small town sprang up, The settlement was initially called Stringer's or Stringer's Creek, but after the township was surveyed it was later rechristened Walhalla - the name of the town's largest mine at that time. The creek running through town still bears his name.
Access to the creek was an ongoing problem in the town's early days owing to the goldfield's remote and inaccessible location. In February 1863, two prospectors John Hinchcliffe and William Myers, discovered an immensely rich quartz outcrop in the hill just above the creek, which was named Cohen's Reef, after a storekeeper at Bald Hills.
Gold panning and related techniques quickly exhausted all the alluvial (surface) deposits. By late 1863 mining operations began as prospectors sought and then followed the underground veins of gold. At Walhalla this could mean tunnelling into the steep valley walls as well as the more traditional digging downward.
The vast majority of gold extraction from Walhalla centred on Cohens Reef, the largest single reef in Victoria. By 1900 the reef had already produced around 55 tonnes of gold (approximately 1.8 million troy ounces).
Later, crushing machinery was used to extract the gold from the quartz-based ore required large amounts of energy, supplied largely by wood-burning steam engines. The need for fuel wood led to the hills being denuded for some considerable distance around town, timber tramways bringing freshly cut timber for the boilers. The associated costs of bringing wood from further and further away were a key factor in the economic problems which eventually ended mining in Walhalla.
A continuous auriferous (rocks or minerals containing gold), belt extends 80 kilometres from Walhalla to Woods Point. The gold mineralisation is associated with dyke intrusion of Walhalla Group sediments with the gold bearing quartz reefs commonly occurring along or sub-parallel to the dykes, or in shears or fractures cutting across dyke bulges. The Long Tunnel group of mines at Walhalla is representative of the former type, while the Toombon mine is one of the few important mines in this area where the gold bearing quartz reefs were not associated with dyke rocks.
A popular misconception is that natural gold has cooled from a molten state. In fact, gold is transported though the Earth’s crust dissolved in warm to hot salty water. These fluids are generated in huge volumes deep in the Earth’s crust as water-bearing minerals dehydrate during metamorphism. Any gold present in the rocks being heated and squeezed is sweated out and goes into solution as complex ions. In this form, dissolved gold, along with other elements such as silicon, iron and sulphur, migrates wherever fractures in the rocks allow the fluids to pass. This direction is generally upwards, to cooler regions at lower pressures nearer the Earth’s surface. Under these conditions, the gold eventually becomes insoluble and begins to crystallise, most often enveloped by masses of white silicon dioxide, known as quartz. This association of gold and quartz forms one of the most common types of "primary gold deposits".
The different mineralisation styles within this region include laminated-massive quartz veins, fissure iodes and dyke related ladder views.
Gold's initial attraction is its colour, an eye-catching and characteristic bright yellow with a soft metallic glint. Gold’s pleasant ‘feel’, a combination of its density (19.3 grams per cubic centimetre when pure) and coldness, cannot be duplicated by any other metal. Furthermore, gold can be hammered into very thin sheets or leaves, drawn into wire, cast, carved, polished, heated without tarnishing and easily combined (alloyed) with other metals.
Gold also conducts heat and electricity, reflects light and is untouched by nearly all acids, a property which led alchemists to christen it the noble metal. This combination of properties makes gold very stable in its natural metallic form, and also gives it many uses in electronics, ornaments, jewellery and advanced technology.
Gold in Quartz
These questions can be answered from the entrance of the mine and inside the free museum.
**Please remember this Earth Cache will not be available all all times**
**Open Daily 11am - 2pm
Questions
Q1 Describe the rock colour and texture at the tunnel entrance.
Q2 There is another tunnel off to the right hand side of the mine entrance. Do the colours differ here and what do you see at the end of the small tunnel?
The next 2 questions can be answered inside the free museum.
Q3 Describe the rock that can be found in the 'Kibble' (Used to haul out rock when shaft sinking)
Q4 Describe the rock found in the 'Cage'
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For a link to my profile, click here - Na'wal
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References ~ Wikipedia, Geosciences Museum of Victoria, Walhalla Museum & VRO