Mafeking is a locality in Australia south-east of
Grampians National Park
The Grampians National Park commonly referred to as The Grampians, is a national park located in the Grampians region of Victoria, Australia. The Jardwadjali name for the mountain range itself is Gariwerd.
The national park is situated betw ...
and from the nearest town of
Willaura.
"In 1900 there was a large rush to the
Grampians area south of
Mt William, to what became known as the Mafeking rush. In 1897 two splitters named Arthur and David Schache found gold in a gully in the granite area, and told the brothers Philip and Frank Emmett, who were on a shooting trip. The Emmetts returned from the Rocky Point Diggings at
Ararat, and stayed with their friends, the Masons. They prospected the area and got the first gold at Masons Falls. On 24th June 1900 they registered a claim, and within a fortnight at the consequent rush, gold had been found in ten gullies. The surveyed town at the rush was called Naram Naram."
"At Mt William (Mafeking) gold derived from granitic rocks intrusive into the Grampians sandstones has been concentrated in gravels of
Tertiary
Tertiary ( ) is a widely used but obsolete term for the geologic period from 66 million to 2.6 million years ago.
The period began with the demise of the non-avian dinosaurs in the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event, at the start ...
age over an area of about a square mile, which have yielded over £100,000 worth of gold. The gold was very fine, and much waterworn. Some of the gravel has been re-concentrated by later streams in shallow deposits. The original gravels vary from in thickness, and values are confined to the lower layers. Small auriferous quartz veins have been found in the granitic rock, but are too small to pay for mining."
The small goldfield yielded 1t of gold from alluvial deposits and from
quartz
Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica ( silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon-oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical ...
veinlets in a weathered I-type
granite
Granite () is a coarse-grained ( phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies under ...
pluton of
Devonian age.
Many
tektites
Tektites (from grc, τηκτός , meaning 'molten') are gravel-sized bodies composed of black, green, brown or grey natural glass formed from terrestrial debris ejected during meteorite impacts. The term was coined by Austrian geologist Franz ...
were found in the alluvial gravels at Mafeking.
[Geology of Victoria Edited W D Birch 2003 Geological Society of Victoria, p667]
There is a winery in the area called ''Grampians Estate''.
References
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Towns in Victoria (state)
Western District (Victoria)