Great Ophir Gold Mine, Davyhurst, Davyhurst Goldfield, Menzies Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Great Ophir Gold Mine	Mine
Davyhurst	- not defined -
Davyhurst Goldfield	Ore Field
Menzies Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

The number of mines the public can visit in Western Australia you can count on one hand. Any visitors need to go through an intensive safety course, making casual visits impractical. The writer learned this lesson early on. Arriving at the front office at the mine, I asked to look around a former public fossicking site, on crown land, the company had taken over and was doing nothing with. I was locked in an office with an aggressive mine manager for ninety minutes, convinced I was spying for another mining company.

However, in the early Twentieth Century, it was common for shareholders, journalists and members of the public to arrive at a mine un-announced; then expect the mine manager to drop everything to give them a personal tour. This included climbing down ladders into the underground workings, with virtually no safety procedures in place.

So it came as a surprise to a journalist from a Kalgoorlie newspaper, who went by the pseudonym 'Vagrant', when he arrived at the Great Ophir mine to find the mine manager, Henry Fey, too busy to see him. Instead the tour was delegated to the metallurgist. Jilted, this journalist then embarked on a campaign of writing opinion pieces covering years, with the most vexatious, vicious and slanderous comments about individuals managing this mine.

The Great Ophir deserved better. It was owned by Perth-Adelaide shareholders, and was about the first locally owned operation to tackle a large low grade lode. The management was inventive in over coming the challenges presented by this ore. The mine's reputation did not appear to put off well regarded new mine manager G. Beard from Cobar NSW. Instead of responding to the criticism, Beard produced detailed weekly reports about all activity at the mine. A tidal wave of information was produced, enough to send the worse insomniac to sleep. Meanwhile, hundreds of companies over this period were floated in London to take over Western Australian mines, only to collapse within two years from mismanagement, with barely a criticism in the local press.

The Ophir name probably relates to the Biblical land of this name that King Solomon's mines were located in. Ike Mandelstamm was the major shareholder, with his brother Herman Mandelstamm active managing the mine. Information was found from 1901, with ore initially sent to the Mulline state battery. However traditional batteries had difficulty treating the ore. The company was reconstructed in 1905 with 75 000 pounds capital.

The ore problem was then overcome by erecting a Kromm roller mill, produced at Bennett's Foundry in Kalgoorlie, and no less than 48 cyanide vats. The type of mill was a highly unusual choice, and after much delays, began processing ore in 1907, it appears successfully. A Huntingdon mill was installed in 1911.

Mining had ground to a halt by 1913, the company abandoned the lease the following year, and sold off the machinery. The company to that point had been the largest gold producer on the Davyhurst Goldfield. To the end of 1911, 74 110 tonnes of ore had been produced for 71 961 ounces of gold.

The mine is mentioned in 1938 as being owned by A. O'Brien. The ground had always been soft, needing much timbering. As the years went by the timber became rotten, and in 1938 there was a large collapse in the underground workings, leading him to abandon mining.

The company also controlled the Great Ophir East, South and West leases, and later the Northern Pole. The main Great Ophir lease had four shafts. Gold was found as thin scales on the face of cleavage planes of schist. The leases contained several parallel north-south trending lines of reef, ranging from a few inches to 4 feet wide, in highly foliated greenstone.

The Great Ophir is 2 kilometres east north-east of the former Davyhurst town site. The Light of Israel pit borders it to the east. The Ophir pit may have been filled with sludge from nearby mining operations. The pit or former pit was developed from the 1990's onwards, together with several other mines on the goldfield at the time. The Davyhurst processing plant is just south-east of the mine, and mining camp a little further south.

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