Drill cores preserved as Victorian mining sites rehabilitated
Two former mining sites near Bendigo, Victoria, are a step closer to rehabilitation with the removal of drill core samples from the Woodvale Evaporation Ponds and the start of rehabilitation work at Kangaroo Flat.
The Victorian Earth Resources Regulator (ERR) is overseeing the rehabilitation of both sites as the former licensee was unable to meet its obligations.
Resources Victoria chief executive Matt Vincent says the drill core to be stored at the Geological Survey of Victoria’s (GSV) Drill Core Library are valuable geoscientific assets which will improve the understanding of Bendigo’s geology.
“The Earth Resources Regulator has permanently sealed the Swan Decline, the primary gateway to Bendigo’s historical underground mining,” he said.
“We’ve unearthed significant historical records and snapshots at Kangaroo Flat dating back to the 1850s and it’s great to be able to pass these on to the Bendigo Historical Society and Goldfields Library Corporation.”
Analysis of drill core is crucial to understanding a region’s geology and the preservation of some of the samples, stockpiled by the former licensee, allows them to be studied without further drilling.
The GSV catalogued more than 2,000 drill holes and almost 1,700 pallets of drill core at Woodvale before deciding to transfer 223 pallets to the Drill Core Library in Werribee for further evaluation and storage.
Stage two removal of the remaining drill core from the Woodvale site in now underway.
At the Kangaroo Flat site a range of work continues. The gateway to Bendigo’s historical underground mining, the Swan Decline, has been permanently sealed.
The Tailing Storage Facility at Kangaroo Flat has been covered with rock to suppress dust levels over summer.
In October 2022 ERR provided the Bendigo Historical Society and the Goldfields Library Corporation with 19 boxes of records and 1350 old photos dating back to the 1850s, following a clean-up at Kangaroo Flat.
The Bendigo Historical Society has made the information available to researchers.
