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MT HEPBURN COMPANY GOLD TREATMENT WORKS

Other Names

GENERAL EXPLORATION COMPANY , KING CASSILIS MINE

Location

SWIFTS CREEK-OMEO ROAD TONGIO, EAST GIPPSLAND SHIRE

File Number

11/003138-01

Level

Heritage Inventory Site

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Statement of Significance

What is significant?
The Mount Hepburn Treatment Works is located near the junction of Power's Gully and Swifts Creek. It is the site of major mining operations from 1896 to 1907 and the elaborate plant and processes required to extract gold from refractory ore (heavily mineralised gold bearing rock). The mine was also briefly worked in the 1930s and 1940s. It is a complicated and extensive site with a series of adit levels, tramways and hut sites and a palimpsest of ore processing relics on the bank of Swifts Creek. The significant components include but are not limited to:
* stone piers – vat foundations and discharge tramway.
* Dumps of cyanided and calcined battery sands and pond.
* Bed of large reverberatory furnace, remnants of flue, stack base and other structures.
* Large ash dump containing ceramic and iron artefacts.
* Water-jacket blast furnace and small dump of slag.
* Clusters of scrap mining plant and vehicles.
* Barrel furnace, compressor, motor engine and associated material (slag and flint stones)
* Abandoned huts and sheds.
* In situ stone crusher, milling machinery and associated structures.
* Earthworks including lower-most mullock heap, tramway and cutting, water race and concrete reservoir.

How is it significant?
The Mount Hepburn Treatment Works is of historical and scientific significance to the State of Victoria.

Why is it significant?
The Mount Hepburn Treatment Works is historically important as a rare example of a once widespread type. In the 1870s Victorian miners began to have success in extracting gold from refractory ores through a process which involved roasting finely ground ore in reverberatory furnaces. In the late 1890s a new chemical process was added to the miner’s ore-retrieval repertoire which involved using solutions of cyanide. The cyanide process proved to be extremely important technology and is still the basis of gold recovery in the mining industry today. Example of both processes – roasting and cyaniding - occurs at the site and their importance at the time is clearly illustrated by the scale of the surviving heritage.

The Mount Hepburn Treatment Works is scientifically important for the survival of a range of relics documenting attempts to treat refractory ores through chemical and metallurgical means. Of crucial significance is the remains of the cyanide works, the surviving features ranging from very visible masonry structures to subtle traces. No other place in Victoria or possibly Australia can match the site, in extent, variety, archaeological or scientific potential in terms of surviving relics.

[Source: Victorian Heritage Register]

Group

Mining and Mineral Processing