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Mines/Australia

Sons of Gwalia mine

Sons of Gwalia mine, Australia, underground, mining gold.

Why Sons of Gwalia is famous

Closed in 1963 and reopened in the 1980s by Sons of Gwalia Ltd. Between 1895 and 1915 the large WA mines produced 66 million pounds, 56 percent of WA gold, and by 1925 Gwalia was the only big mine outside the Golden Mile.1,2,3

Story cards

What kind of deposit

Orogenic gold (low-sulphide gold-quartz veins)

Sons of Gwalia today

Where gold is mined todayMining in Australia

Where next

People

Worked hereHerbert HooverA 22-year-old Stanford graduate became superintendent of Sons of Gwalia.4

Mines

ExamplesAgnewNorthern Goldfields gold, old and new: Agnew near Leinster and Sons of Gwalia near Leonora.5

Places

Located inGwaliaSons of Gwalia sits at Gwalia.1Located inLeonoraSons of Gwalia is about 3 km from Leonora.1

Deposit types

An example ofOrogenic gold (low-sulphide gold-quartz veins)Sons of Gwalia belongs to the orogenic gold family of deposits.6

Sources

  1. Sons of Gwalia Shire of Leonora
  2. Western Australian gold history State Library of Western Australia
  3. Wikidata entity Q5623251
  4. Herbert Hoover State Library of Western Australia
  5. Annual Report on Form 20-F for 2025 Gold Fields Limited (SEC)
  6. Mineral Deposit Models (Bulletin 1693, Cox and Singer, eds., 1986) US Geological Survey

Pictures on this page: President Hoover portrait.jpg, Underwood & Underwood (Public domain).

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Super Pit, Kalgoorlie by Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0.