Sadly this piece of mining history has totally rotted away.... food for the white ants.
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The lease was probably pegged in 1895, the original prospectors unknown, and taken up shortly after by the company.
The lease contained a 30 head battery, although this was replaced later with a 50 head battery at the Englishman lease, at the company's main
mine. The lease contained three shafts down to 230 feet on a reef 2 to 4 feet thick. Between 1899 to 1901 as an example, the mine produced 135 000 pounds money-wise in gold in early Twentieth Century figures. 9000 pounds of this was paid in dividends. To 1925 the mine had produced 12 169 tonnes of ore for 11 665 ounces of gold at 19.17 dwt.
William Thomas was leaning over the shaft in September 1905, when his head was decapitated by a skip being hauled up. The inquest determined no-one was to blame.
Tributers had been at the mine from 1904, in one 12 month period one party obtained 20 000 pounds money wise of gold from the lease. The Cosmopolitan Mine closed in January 1908, and the company ceased activity at the Altona shortly after. The mine was let permanently to tributers, and activity by them was found to 1923.
One source states the following about the mining situation at Kookynie in 1910: 'The massive pile of buildings, the thousand of pounds worth of machinery lying idle on the big mine, the rows of empty shops, and dwellings to be met with on all sides, stand as a striking monument to the vanity of human wishes, and the gullibility on the English mining investor'.
Charles De Bernales purchased the mine in 1915, and applied for continual exemptions. The warden would refuse stating (Bernales) 'had completely shirked his obligations', but Bernales would approach the Mines Department directly, in one case thirteen exemptions were obtained from the department in a six month period. Bernales had begun his campaign for world domination years before in the mining machinery business. It culminated during the 1930's mining boom, when he controlled numerous gold mines. Little mining ever took place at his mines, their ownership and sale was largely for speculation purposes. Dodgey deals between his various holding companies saw him fall from grace in the early 1940's.
Fed up with inactivity at the mine, local residents organised a protest meeting and were successful in gaining control of the mine in 1920. A local syndicate headed by former Kookynie mayor R. O'Connor took over, although activity continued with just tributers.
Little then happens until 1948, when Tommy Barrett takes over the lease. A couple of tributing parties reconditioned the shafts and some ore was taken out later in the year by Colley and party, and Smith and E. Jolly. The lease contained a 3 head mill at this time.
The Altona lease contained Kookynie's own Leaning Tower of Pisa, in the form of the old wooden Altona headframe. The forces of gravity and termites saw this collapse in January 2008, and it is now a pile of timber. Shafts and overgrown battery sands can be seen. The mine is 1 kilometre east north-east of Kookynie, and 200 metres down a track on the south side of the Kookynie-Mount Remarkable Road.
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Very hard to find information on this heritage building.
Alamy Stock Photos quotes:-
"Lampreys Building. In 1834 John Lamprey bought the corn merchandising business of R. Edmunds and Son. He lived above his shop here and the building became the company headquarters."
This building bears the date of 1839 so I can only guess that the business was established elsewhere prior to construction of these premises.
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c.1340
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The white object is the foreground is one of two Miraestels - Stargazers - statutes that float in the harbour.
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