Norseman, Dundas Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Norseman	Town
Dundas Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

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Norseman is a town located in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia along the Coolgardie-Esperance Highway, 726 kilometres (451 mi) east of Perth and 278 metres (912 ft) above sea level. It is also the starting point of the Eyre Highway, and the last major town in Western Australia before the South Australian border 720 kilometres (447 mi) to the east.

Credit for the discovery of gold here goes to a horse, named Norseman. In 1894, Laurie Sinclair was visiting his brother George, who was prospecting in the area. Laurie tethered Norseman to a tree for the night, and the next morning noticed he had been digging into the ground, uncovering a lump of quartz with gold in it. Subsequently, the brothers and Jack Alsopp discovered a rich reef of gold at the location.

Norseman is 193 kilometres south of Kalgoorlie. Lack of water and isolation meant the town struggled until the 1930's when Western Mining Corporation entered the area, and invested heavily in infrastructure for the town.

A number of small gold operations occur in the area, but the major producer is the Norseman Gold Mine, which has continuously been operating for 65 years. One of the declines is named Bullen, and sometimes expensive, high quality gold specimens are seen for sale labelled 'Bullen Mine'.

The Norseman Gold Belt is about 70 kilometres in length, with 35 kilometres north, and an equal distance south of the town of Norseman. It consists of two parallel ranges of hills, running due north-south, along the eastern side of local lakes (salt-pans). Some of the ground attains an altitude of 500 to 600 feet, and the reefs followed the surface in some cases to the highest points. The main lodes have the same direction as the country, with three giant quartz vein systems called Norseman, Crown and Mararoa. There are also a number of east-west trending cross-reefs.

The belt is about 3 kilometres wide in the north (ignoring outlying deposits of Desirable to the west and Buldania to the east), and 1.5 kilometre wide south of Norseman. The giant Jimberlana Dyke crosses the field from east-west, 5 kilometres north of the town. This has not disrupted the gold belt which extends north of the dyke into the Lake Cowan salt-pan. Unlike many other Western Australian goldfields, there was little alluvial gold found.

The late 1890's, saw many small gold mines opened in the region by prospectors and small local and English companies. Many of these were on low grade propositions, uneconomic at the time, and had closed by the turn of the Century. Norseman Gold Mines gradually purchased or took over abandoned leases until it became the dominant company on the field.

By the 1930's gold boom, Central Norseman Gold Mines (owned by Western Mining Corporation) controlled most of the field, and the company entered a golden age which lasted through to the 1950's. Mining by the company continued more or less uninterrupted in the Norseman area until 2014, when it went into administration and closed the mines.

Over the decades, various mines came to prominence, however in later years, the Bullen, Princess Royal, Harlequin, and O.K. mines were the most important.

Commodity List

This is a list of exploitable or exploited mineral commodities recorded from this region.

Mineral List

Mineral list contains entries from the region specified including sub-localities

73 valid minerals. 2 (TL) - type locality of valid minerals. 2 (FRL) - first recorded locality of unapproved mineral/variety/etc.

Rock Types Recorded

Rock list contains entries from the region specified including sub-localities