Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):
30° 44' 39'' South , 121° 35' 57'' East
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):
Mindat Locality ID:
271973
Long-form identifier:
mindat:1:2:271973:6
Corsair is 10 kilometres east of Kalgoorlie, consisting of some scattered shafts, small shallow surface workings, and modern exploration lines. These trend north-west to south-east, south of Bulong Road, and either side of the Nimbus mine access road.
It was never a rich area for gold, although some copper was found. It was initially floated as a prospecting lease by George Gray. The company employed seventy miners, who left other mines on the Golden Mile. They found when they arrived, the pay rates given, were less than promised. The mine was soon under exemption for extended periods.
April 1896, only shortly after the mine development had started, the company was reconstructed as the Gold Finance Company, and sought leases elsewhere on the goldfields.
The lode is schistose and ironstone, with grey quartz. The reef near the surface contained 40% copper, and a little gold, but the latter was not payable. This pinched at the 40 to 100 feet levels before widening again. A rich patch was discovered at the 125 foot level, but gold values again soon disappeared.
Prospectors took an interest in the area as copper leases in 1899, and some fine specimens were said to be displayed in Kalgoorlie at the time. A local syndicate took over the leases in 1907, again for copper, but no substantial mining was found for the metal. A passing mention is made in one source for chloragyrite in the lode, but is unconfirmed.
August 1896, Mrs F.A. Holman went to London to float the property, and succeeded at the end of 1897, as the Corsair Main Reef Company or Corsair Consolidated Gold Mines Ltd. Holman was a self trained mineralogist, assayer and mining expert. She was appointed mine manager for the new project, any woman in mining for the time unheard of, let alone in a managerial position. This enterprise did not last long either.
An article in 1977, talks about nickel bearing rocks in the area, although it is not hugely enlightening. Corsair ultamafics it says contains seven metaserpentinzed olivine rich sills, in a narrow zone of regionally folded and metamorphosed volcaniclastic rocks, with the Mulgabbie Formation on the east side, and Lakewood Syncline on the west.
It was formed by a series of olivine phenocryst bearing magma pulses in near horizontal county rock. The olivine phenocrysts, and some chromite phenocrysts form a 'quench texture' groundmass, largely of clinopyroxene crystallites and altered chloritised glass.
In the Corsair sills, the olivine has been largely pseudomorphed by serpentine, containing relict olivine kernals in the sills, and at the margins skeletal with no relict olivine.
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3 valid minerals.
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