Baddera (Baddera North; South Baddera), Northampton, Northampton Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Baddera (Baddera North; South Baddera)	- not defined -
Northampton	- not defined -
Northampton Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

Locality: 8 km north of Northampton.

Located approximately two kilometres east of the North West Coastal Highway. Access is via an unlocked gate, and walk over a hill. The Heritage Council states the mine is the most complete evidence on the mineral field of the application of steam power to mining and processing. It states the surviving Franier pump remnants are possibly the only example of this pump on an Australian mine site. The Cornish boilers at the mine are rare in the state, and the Huntington Mill crusher is unique in the state.

Baddera Mine was established in 1873 and worked for ten years to a maximum depth of 30 metres. It was worked again from 1910-1921, producing 14 110 tonnes of lead from 131 340 tonnes of ore. It was the largest production wise of any lead mine in Western Australia. Baddera North Mine was worked 1948-1953 and yielded 730 tonnes of lead from 15 610 tonnes of ore.

Due to a ban on exporting lead to be processed, a crushing and concentrating plant was built at Baddera mine in 1914, and the plant worked full time for ten months. At this time the mine was owned by the Fremantle Trading Co Ltd, dominated by E. Protheroe Jones.

The North Baddera Mine was worked to shallow depths in the mid 1880's. Mining though on a significant scale did not start till 1947, when a miner called H. A. Coles formed local company Northampton Mining and Development Co for mining lead and silver at the site. In 1953, two miners died after a rock fall, being the worst accident experienced on the field. Underground mining was then abandoned at the site.

The processing plant however kept operating for another three years, processing ore from the Gurkha Mine nearby to the west. The ore was discharged into a hopper in the decline shaft from where the skips were filled. They were then hoisted up the sloping shaft to a poppet head bin for processing. From the main bin the ore passed for primary crushing in a jaw crusher and then secondary crushing in a Huntington Mill, where the ore is crushed by pendulum rollers against a perimeter ring. The crushed ore was then elevated to a bin where it was separated by a cylindrical sieve into fines and oversize material. The fines passed to either of two Wilfley table concentrators where the metal concentrates were separated by settlement and vibration. In 1956 the North Baddera processing plant was transferred to the Gurkha Mine and the Baddera site abandoned. Please note the Baddera site is covered by heritage orders and removal of any mining equipment is illegal.

The ore body occur as a cymoid loop structure formed where two bands of massive glassy quartz are intersected by the lode shear. The bands of quartz trend sub parallel to the local foliation of the country rock. Two branches of the shear are exposed at the southern end of the mine, and can be followed on the surface along the workings, and rejoins in the southern most pit.

Ferguson states the deposit consists of discontinuous variable length and width galena lenses in a lode shear 2.5 metres wide, dipping 73 degrees west in granulite, pegmatite and quartz. It is a cymoid loop structure forming two bands of massive quartz, intersected by the shear. Mineralisation is found as open space fillings, narrow veins, and within finely brecciated or powdered rock.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

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