GOLD AT MOUNT MORGAN. 
217 
THE OCCURRENCE OF GOLD AT MOUNT 
MORGAN, QUEENSLAND * 
BY THOS. H. WALLER, B.A., B. SC. 
A good deal lias been heard of Mount Morgan during the 
last year or two, its name having been used to recommend 
to the attention of investors mines in the same neighbour¬ 
hood which, nevertheless, may for all the English public can 
tell, be of a very different character, and in the course of the 
prospectuses some information has been given as to the mine 
itself. Still, I suppose the normal fate of such documents is 
the waste-paper basket, and the facts respecting this unique 
gold occurrence are so remarkable that they seemed worthy 
of a short note. 
Those who visited the Colonial Exhibition last year will 
remember, possibly, the great masses of red-brown stone, piled 
up in the centre of the Queensland Court, looking like portions 
of great stalactites of hematite. The specimens I am able 
to show you to-night were sent to me by my brother, who 
obtained them when visiting Queensland on business a couple 
of years ago, and they show the same structure of the 
material. 
The history of the mine is as extraordinary as its chemical 
and geological relations, and affords a striking instance of the 
value of observation when united to knowledge, and above all 
of the value of keeping your own counsel until you can see 
your way to turning knowledge to your own advantage. 
About 1870 a squatter took up a couple of “selections” 
of land of a square mile each, about twenty-five miles (south¬ 
west) from Rockhampton, in Queensland. One of these 
included the south-east portion of a rough and rocky hill, 
which here and there showed among its stunted vegetation 
great boulders of a dark metallic looking-rock. Farming did 
not prosper with the unfortunate possessor of the land, and 
when copper mining seemed likely to succeed in the district, 
he had his selection examined by a professional geologist, who 
found no copper, but pronounced the rough hill a mountain 
of ironstone. Droughts, the frequently recurring curse of 
Australia, and other causes, finally ruined the squatter, and 
he had to take to labourer’s work in a mine near by. One day, 
he offered to show his mountain of ironstone to the owners 
* Transactions of the Birmingham Natural History and Micro¬ 
scopical Society. Geological Section. Read April 19tli, 1887. 
