110 
EOCKHAMPTON GOLD FIELDS. - 
(ExciitJDiNG Mount Moegan.) 
CROCODILE, ROSEWOOD, MORINISH, RIDGELANDS, AKD CAW AREAL. 
The Crocodile Gold Field lies at the foot of the north-west escarpment of the 
tableland on which Mount Morgan is situated, and can hardly be more than from 1 to 
300 feet above the sea-level, on the heads of Gavial Creek, which falls into Keppel Bay 
thus proving, by the way, the falsity of an obstinate superstition among miners to the 
effect that payable gold cannot be found on the east coast. This belief, or rather its 
ogical converse, that any gold found on the east coast cannot be jiayablc, has exerted a 
powerful depressing inHiicnce on all such shows, as miners could hardly be induced to 
give them a trial. The prevailing country-rock is granite or syenite, and in this are the 
Hector, Who’d-havo thought-it, Block and Pillar, Hit or Miss, and other reefs. The 
St. Gothard and Bonanza are in altered stratified rocks — slates, greywackes, grits, and 
conglomerates — intersected by diorite dykes. 
At the Eosewood Gold Field the Golden Bar Eeef is composed for the most part 
of calcspar and chlorite, in pockets, and coating crystals of calcite. Sometimes there is 
also a good deal of quartz, and crystalline pyrites occurs in films on the surface of the 
veins. Some very rich bunches of gold have been obtained in calcspar veins in this mine. 
The reef occurs in a diorite dyke, which is mostly altered to chlorite. Rich 
bunches have also been obtained in the Caledonian Reef, a large body of quartz with 
patches and pockets of chlorite, intersecting highly altered sandstone country. 
At Blackfellow’s Gully three reefs— the Homeward Bound, Carnarvon Castle, 
and Mary Florence — have been worked. 
At Morinish the 'VV elcome Eeef has been worked to a depth of over 350 feet in a 
country-rock of fine-grained serpentinous greywacke. The reef is of quartz, with iron 
pyrites, arsenical pyrites, a little galena, and a very little zinc-blende. It has been 
worked for many years with fair success. 
At Hew Zealand Gully is the North Star Mine, in porphyry country. 
At Cawarral the Galawa, Annie, Helena, and Amiie ITalliday, in serpentine 
country, have yielded good returns. The Cawarral serpentine, as has already been 
shown, is merely a product of the metamorphism of sedimentary rocks belonging to the 
Gympie Formation. 
Most of those small fields have yielded a good deal of alluvial gold. A nugget 
weighing 258 oz. 11 dwt. wms found at Mount Wheeler (Cawarral). 
The output of the various Rockhampton Gold Fields cannot be correctly given, 
as the earlier records are lost in the mists of an antiquity of over thirty years. In 
18GG, the AVarden estimated the amount of gold at 1,000 oz. per week — 52,000 oz. foT 
the year. In 18G7, the amount is given at 33,739 oz. In 18G8, the total is given at 
25,505 oz., of which 8,982 oz. were the yield of 7,504 tons of stone crushed. A total 
of 111,244 oz. is thus accounted for in three of the years previous to 1877, when returns 
began to bo regularly published. It is probably well within the mark to assume that the 
total yield for the period amounted to about 200,000 oz. From 1SS5, or, perhaps, from 
1884 to 1887, the returns from the field are mixed up with those from Mount Morgan. 
In 1887 the yield for the whole of the fields, excluding Mount Morgan, w'as estimated 
by the AFarden at 1,G00 oz. In 1888, the total, including Mount Morgan, is estimated 
at 117,800 oz , but the amounts from the different fields are not stated. In 1889 the 
yield from mines in the district, other than Mount Morgan, is estimated at 2,130 oz., 
but thi.s is stated to be “exclusive of alluvial.” In 1890, the yield from mines other 
than Mount Morgan is estimated at G,131 oz. 
