Abadoned Mine Research
When I started out getting into mine exploring, I had real trouble getting any kind of decent information about what might be out, there particularly in Victoria. Because I’m a Good Person™ I thought I’d put a bunch of resources and stuff to make it easier for those of you starting out.
Bear in mind that mine researching is:
a) f*****g boring
b) f*****g frustrating and
c) Doesn’t have any guarantee of results
I’ve spent days on places and have come up with nothing, and five minutes on others and come up with 10 places I’ve wanted to visit. You will have to spend long periods of time looking for holes in the ground that may or may not exist and believe me, it gets old fast.
Now the tools used to research are different based on where you want to explore. By far the easiest region in Vic for mine exploring is the high country, particularly the Woods Point – Walhalla belt. That area has been extensively mapped (more on that later), heritage inventoried (more on that later) and most of the mines have adit/portal entry, which means a minimum of rope work involved. The downside of the area is that the scrub is thick and the hills are steep (also if you spend enough time up there you’ll end up married to an 18 year old called “shazza” and have kids with two heads and spend your nights sitting on your porch plucking a banjo). The other obvious areas are Ballarat/Clunes/Creswick/Daylesford or out Bendigo way, now these are nice areas and jumping in the car and cruising around country back roads on a sunny spring day looking at mine sites is rad and all, but most of the mining out here was deep lead stuff, so bring some rope and know how to use it.
So I'll do two sections here, the first for actual information sources, the second for tools.
Sources
Heritage Victoria
So a good first port of call is Heritage Vic, they have done extensive surveys of mine sites throughout the state and most of it is online and easily accessible. The catch is that they were mostly done around 1995, so the reports are getting on 17 years old now. Thankfully most mines don’t up and change location all that often so the info is sometimes useful.
There are a heap of different mine site PDF files that deal with different areas of the state here
The locations are sometimes fun, like the ones that just say Location: X rd. f*****g thanks for that, I’ll just drive up and down some god forsaken country road for hours at a time hoping there will be a giant neon sign or some s***. It’s best to leave the non-specific ones until you’re already in the area and have extra time, trust me.
Trove
Website of the National Library. Allows you to search books, digitized newspapers, maps and a whole bunch of other stuff. Super useful if you know the name of the mine and want more info on it. I have found downloadable underground workings maps for a few mines on here.
Adventurer Maps
This specific to the Woods Point – Walhalla area, but these guys have extensively mapped that entire region with a view towards ghost towns and mines. Their maps are f*****g rad and spot on and their “Ghost Town Series” book (which includes all of their maps for the area) is the best mine related $50 I have ever spent. No other map that I’ve yet seen matches the accuracy of the locations of track and mines in these maps. You can also but specific area maps off them for $10 each.
Talking to people
You’ll be surprised at what info you can get off locals in an area, don’t annoy people, but certainly have a yarn, offer them a smoke/beer/whatever and you’ll be surprised at the amount of stuff you can find out. Last time I was in Woods Point I stopped for a beer at the pub and walked out with a town mud map, with the mines around the town marked out on it.
Tools
Geoscience Australia
These guys have all the maps, all of them. Topographic, geologic plus mineral data, the works. The downside is that the map viewer is kinda hard to work, but they make up for it by allowing you to request map data and have it sent to you as a pdf in an email.
Google Earth
Get this on your computer, it will allow you to plug in roads, areas and lat/long coordinates and show you where they are. Super useful for planning exploring days.
Map Tools
This will let you convert almost any Geodetic Datum (map scale) to any other. Useful for converting older AGD66 Maps to lat/long coordinates. Only for iphone though. Go here for a windows tool.
So now you’ve done all this research, its time to get in the car and drive around. I generally plan the areas I want to look at in advance and do day trips out from Melbourne, then set out more time for exploring promising areas in detail.
http://www.mindat.org
Jaffs on CC and Jaffs01 on Flickr
"urbex is not for tourists......its for adventurers" DeScent (RIP)
"urbex is not for tourists......its for adventurers" DeScent (RIP)
hum mines you say ? finding them you say ? i use geovickontour10 wrote:At the risk of over-saturating, I'm posting this thread at the request of someone in one of my other threads. It's pretty Victoria-centric but I hope at lease someone here will find it useful.
When I started out getting into mine exploring, I had real trouble getting any kind of decent information about what might be out, there particularly in Victoria. Because I’m a Good Person™ I thought I’d put a bunch of resources and stuff to make it easier for those of you starting out.
Bear in mind that mine researching is:
a) f*****g boring
b) f*****g frustrating and
c) Doesn’t have any guarantee of results
I’ve spent days on places and have come up with nothing, and five minutes on others and come up with 10 places I’ve wanted to visit. You will have to spend long periods of time looking for holes in the ground that may or may not exist and believe me, it gets old fast.
Now the tools used to research are different based on where you want to explore. By far the easiest region in Vic for mine exploring is the high country, particularly the Woods Point – Walhalla belt. That area has been extensively mapped (more on that later), heritage inventoried (more on that later) and most of the mines have adit/portal entry, which means a minimum of rope work involved. The downside of the area is that the scrub is thick and the hills are steep (also if you spend enough time up there you’ll end up married to an 18 year old called “shazza” and have kids with two heads and spend your nights sitting on your porch plucking a banjo). The other obvious areas are Ballarat/Clunes/Creswick/Daylesford or out Bendigo way, now these are nice areas and jumping in the car and cruising around country back roads on a sunny spring day looking at mine sites is rad and all, but most of the mining out here was deep lead stuff, so bring some rope and know how to use it.
So I'll do two sections here, the first for actual information sources, the second for tools.
Sources
Heritage Victoria
So a good first port of call is Heritage Vic, they have done extensive surveys of mine sites throughout the state and most of it is online and easily accessible. The catch is that they were mostly done around 1995, so the reports are getting on 17 years old now. Thankfully most mines don’t up and change location all that often so the info is sometimes useful.
There are a heap of different mine site PDF files that deal with different areas of the state here
The locations are sometimes fun, like the ones that just say Location: X rd. f*****g thanks for that, I’ll just drive up and down some god forsaken country road for hours at a time hoping there will be a giant neon sign or some s***. It’s best to leave the non-specific ones until you’re already in the area and have extra time, trust me.
Trove
Website of the National Library. Allows you to search books, digitized newspapers, maps and a whole bunch of other stuff. Super useful if you know the name of the mine and want more info on it. I have found downloadable underground workings maps for a few mines on here.
Adventurer Maps
This specific to the Woods Point – Walhalla area, but these guys have extensively mapped that entire region with a view towards ghost towns and mines. Their maps are f*****g rad and spot on and their “Ghost Town Series” book (which includes all of their maps for the area) is the best mine related $50 I have ever spent. No other map that I’ve yet seen matches the accuracy of the locations of track and mines in these maps. You can also but specific area maps off them for $10 each.
Talking to people
You’ll be surprised at what info you can get off locals in an area, don’t annoy people, but certainly have a yarn, offer them a smoke/beer/whatever and you’ll be surprised at the amount of stuff you can find out. Last time I was in Woods Point I stopped for a beer at the pub and walked out with a town mud map, with the mines around the town marked out on it.
Tools
Geoscience Australia
These guys have all the maps, all of them. Topographic, geologic plus mineral data, the works. The downside is that the map viewer is kinda hard to work, but they make up for it by allowing you to request map data and have it sent to you as a pdf in an email.
Google Earth
Get this on your computer, it will allow you to plug in roads, areas and lat/long coordinates and show you where they are. Super useful for planning exploring days.
Map Tools
This will let you convert almost any Geodetic Datum (map scale) to any other. Useful for converting older AGD66 Maps to lat/long coordinates. Only for iphone though. Go here for a windows tool.
So now you’ve done all this research, its time to get in the car and drive around. I generally plan the areas I want to look at in advance and do day trips out from Melbourne, then set out more time for exploring promising areas in detail.
helps a lot and has mine plans as well if you want to know more on mines pm me ive been doing it for a while and know of a few I map explore record all historical mines all over Victoria