History of Early Herberton

On the 6th June 1875 James Venture Mulligan discovered tin ore in the Wild River near Herberton. He wrote in his journal that “there may be any quantity of it here, but what use is it at present …"
 
Mulligan was one of the early white explorers who trekked through this area, often traversed only by the Aboriginal people. He was driven by a search for mineral wealth - mainly gold.
 
Another early settler, John Atherton, whose attention was mostly centred on cattle, directed a small party of which John Newell was a member, to the same site in November 1879.

However they were not successful in finding payable quantities of ore and returned to the already established tin diggings at Tinaroo.
 
Rumours in early 1880 that Chinese miners were planning to move to a new find, revived the interest of several members of that earlier party. A group of four, William Jack, John Newell, Thomas Brandon and John Brown, on the assumption that the new find could be near the Wild River, returned to the area and this time found payable quantities of ore. 
 
They traced the source of the ore up a small gully now locally known as Prospectors Gully (shown on some maps as the Great Northern Gully) and after initially failing to recognise the significance of the outcrops of black rocks, soon realised they were the discoverers of a major find. It was, in fact, lode tin, as distinct from alluvial ore, and one of the richest finds in Australia. The following day they posted notice of the claim. The date was 20th April 1880.
 
Local folklore tells of the smelting of some samples in a tree stump to verify what it was, followed by an epic overland ride by John Newell to Thornborough to lay claim to the find.
  
The first mining operations actually commenced on the 8th May. By the end of that month 100 tons of tin ore were stacked on the field. The first tin from Herberton arrived in Cairns on 17th July.
  
After Warden Mowbray laid out the town on 21st August, tents and bark huts began to give way to sturdier timber buildings.
 
By 11th September, Herberton could boast a hotel, a butcher shop, and three stores, and the original discoverers had purchased a 60 acre (24 hectare) reward claim they called the Great Northern.

* Courtesy Herberton Mining Centre (link to site)


Geology of company held prospects

The Herberton - Irvinebank – Mount Garnet and Tate tin fields are situated mainly within the Siluro-Devonian aged Hodgkinson Province of the Tasman Orogenic Zone. The Hodgkinson sedimentary basin is bounded to the west by the Palmerville Fault, which is a major north-west trending suture, separating the Paleozoic basin from Precambrian metamorphic rocks.
 
Sediments of the Hodgkinson Formation comprise a thick sequence of clastic marine greywackes, shales, slates and sandstones which contain locally minor volcanic and chert interbeds. These are intruded by dykes and overlain by extrusions of acid igneous rocks of upper Palaeozoic age.
 
High-level upper Carboniferous to lower Permian aged granites of the O’Brien’s Creek Super suite, the Ootan Super suite and the Almaden Super suite, intrude the Hodgkinson Formation and the Precambrian in the Tate tin field area. This threefold identification of granite super suites complies with the recognition of broad chemical and mineralogical consistencies within the wide geographic and age spread of outcropping granites. Within the CTM project areas a number of small to large granite outcrops have been mapped and named, but are now grouped as members of the O’Brien’s Creek Super suite. These O’Brien’s Creek Super suite members are considered to be the main source of tin and tungsten for the project area. They were formerly commonly known as the Elizabeth Creek Granite - a very large batholith of leucocratic biotite adamellite-granite. Greisen and pipe formation is common at the contacts between the Hodgkinson Formation and the O’Brien’s Creek member granites.
  
Gold and copper is associated with the Almaden Super suite, and tungsten and molybdenum is associated with the Ootan Super suite. In the Leichhardt Creek Project, tin mineralisation is apparently associated with the Cannibal Creek and Mareeba Granites of probable Carboniferous age.
  
Granite emplacement appears to be controlled by major faulting; many batholiths are located along and parallel to the north-west trend of the Palmerville Fault. Most of CTM’s tenements are located on and around the Palmerville Fault at Mount Garnet. At the Leichhardt Creek Project, the tin-bearing granite is located on a parallel Palmerville trend. Granites also trend westerly from Mount Garnet for over a hundred kilometres. Granites in the region of the Tate and Lynd River-Kangaroo Creek tenements are aligned on a westerly trend.
  
The Hodgkinson Formation sediments are generally metamorphosed to greenschist facies and display broad north-trending upright folding. The folding decreases from intensely folded in the east, to gentley folded in the west. Small scale faulting, characteristically with the north-west Palmerville trend, is common. 
  
Cainozoic and Quaternary river systems have produced extensive alluvial deposits. Some of these have been buried by widespread basalt flows to form “deep leads”. 
  
 
Mineralisation
  
Alluvial deposits have been an important source of tin since the earliest days of mining; both small scale mining of rich deposits in small creeks and larger operations, on lower grade deposits in river systems large enough to use dredges. Alluvial operations generally continued longer than did hard-rock mines because of greater flexibility.
  
However, the Herberton - Irvinebank tin field is unusual in that a high proportion, estimated more than half, of tin production was sourced from hard-rock mines, notably the Vulcan at Irvinebank (13 712 tons) and the Great Northern at Herberton (~5000 tons). Several other mines produced in the order of 1000 to 2000 tons.
  
Approximately 200 000 tonnes of tin concentrate are estimated to have been produced from the tin field but the figures are unreliable because of the enormous amount of small scale mining with poor records.
   
Mining ventures rapidly declined in the early 1980s when the international tin cartel collapsed and currently there are no operations based on tin.
  
The CTM tenements at Mt Garnet, Leichhardt Creek, the Tate and Lynd Rivers cover deposits of alluvial tin. At Mount Garnet hard-rock tin is also being explored.
  
Hard-rock tin mineralisation at Mount Garnet is widespread in both the sediments and in the O’Brien’s Creek Super suite granites. It is found in greisen zones, in skarn rocks and in late-stage intrusive bodies. High-grade cassiterite deposits are mainly associated with sulphide mineralisation and chlorite alteration in structurally deformed zones, as complex vein systems and pipes located at fault intersections. Tin occurs mainly as cassiterite and sometimes as stannite, particularly when found with other sulphides such as chalcopyrite (copper), galena (lead) and sphalerite (zinc), which may be abundant.  CTM is investigating the entire range of mineralisation styles.
  
Deposits rich in tungsten, molybdenum and antimony are also associated with the O’Brien’s Creek Super suite granites. A zonation from tungsten within the granite batholith, outwards to tin at the margins and contact of the granite and then base-metals largely within the sediments is apparent.
  
The tin and base-metal rich deposits if the Herberton tin field are unusually high in indium which is an emerging metal.
  
The only economically significant base-metal deposit of any size is that of the historic Mount Garnet Copper Mine, which is interpreted to be a distal zinc-copper rich skarn mineralisation hosted by sediments. This is currently a highly successful zinc producer operated by Kagara Zinc Limited. The Red Dome mine (now closed) just north of Chillagoe is the closest large known gold deposit in the region. The Mount Carbine tungsten deposit was mined during the 1980s and the Watershed tungsten deposit, north of Mount Carbine, is currently the subject of feasibility studies. Tungsten and molybdenum deposits at Wolfram Camp, north of Dimbulah, are scheduled for production.