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Is the gold visible in the challenger pegmatite? How is it distributed in the pegmatite? Is it associated particularly with the quartz, or one of the other minerals or not?
It is visible. It is mostly with the quartz. Originally it was a normal gold-quartz vein containing gold, arsenopyrite and pyrite with probable white mica margins. It was buried to great depth (higher temperature and pressure) to the point where minerals reacted with each other and it partly melted to form a pegmatite . The original micas formed feldspars and kyanite (from memory), the arsenopyrite-pyrite converted to lollingite-pyrrhotite and the veins became tightly folded and dismembered - so discontinuoius clumps of pegmatitic material.

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Might be better to call this "Quartz-poor gold deposits from around the world". which is what I was describing.
 
Slight correction - it is called Yan Yean road and the poppet head was really on the Golden Crown or Golden Gate. There had been a Golden Steps north of it but no poppet head. The Golden Stairs was a different mine run by Bill Clayton and worked by an adit in the gully well to the south, but he was mostly working the Golden King south of North Oatlands road using windlasses not a proper poppet head (the road being the lease boundary). The poppet head on the Golden Crown has been moved to the local museum. Bill Clayton and Bill Wallace did not get along (something to do with mistreatment of a borrowed horse) and one would wait until the other went underground before blasting (the workings were connected).

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Probably a long shot here but you wouldn’t happen to have any more info or even pictures of the Golden Crown mine?
I now own the land that the Golden Crown was on and am keen to collect some more info on the history of the mine before it it lost.
Thanks . Some of what I have attached.
This image shows how the Golden Crown and Golden King workings were linked under North Oatlands rd.

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