Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):	33° 22' 59'' South , 116° 8' 12'' East
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):	-33.38319,116.13663
GeoHash:	G#: qd4d4fb0g
Locality type:	Mine
Köppen climate type:	Csb : Warm-summer Mediterranean climate

The Griffin Coal Mining Syndicate was formed in 1926 to test a lease just south of the Collie River. The first mine manager was A.J. Stibbs.

The shareholders were local mining men working at other mines in the district. This co-operative arrangement was common on the coalfield, however somehow it did not prevent conflict with the Miner's Union, and strikes regularly occurred. Sources tend to mention the Griffin and Wyvern mines as separate, but were neighbours accessing the same lode. The Wyvern name starts in 1944. All the workings were closed in 1954, after the coal resources at the site were exhausted. The company moved to open pit mining at Muja, and Griffin is still with us today mining east of Collie.

In 1946 it is mentioned the Wyvern is one of the smallest on the field, employing 35 men, producing 500 tonnes of coal per week. Together the two mines employed about 153 men, producing 340 tonnes of coal per day.

Coal was being sent to the Collie power station. After the war, the mine was mechanised, doing away with the Dickensian hand mining, and ponies. Shuttle cars, a joy loader, and arc wall coal cutter were imported. With a certain sense of wonderment, the process was described as a face of coal 24 feet wide, with 20 holes bored with electric drills, and charged with gelignite.

Mechanical loaders deposited the ore onto conveyor belts, and shuttle cars to the surface. It is then deposited into a tumbler, with fine and large lumps of coal graded automatically by falling through different sized holes.

The mine is just south of Minninup Pool, south of Collie. Just after the Griffin Bridge, the track called the Wyvern Road is taken east. It soon passes the Phoenix mine site, then further on is a large cleared tailings area bordering the track to the south (Griffin?), and smaller area some tens of metres north of the track (Wyvern?). The site follows the same scorched earth policy of other historic mine sites surrounding Collie.

Commodity List

This is a list of exploitable or exploited mineral commodities recorded at this locality.

Mineral List

Rock Types Recorded

Regional Geology

This geological map and associated information on rock units at or nearby to the coordinates given for this locality is based on relatively small scale geological maps provided by various national Geological Surveys. This does not necessarily represent the complete geology at this locality but it gives a background for the region in which it is found.

Click on geological units on the map for more information. Click here to view full-screen map on Macrostrat.org

Cenozoic 0 - 66 Ma ID: 698364

ferruginous duricrust 38498 Age: Cenozoic (0 - 66 Ma) Description: Ferruginous duricrust, laterite; pisolitic, nodular, vuggy; may include massive to pisolitic ferruginous subsoil, mottled clays, magnesite, reworked products of ferruginous and siliceous duricrusts, calcrete, gossan; residual ferruginous saprolite Comments: regolith; synthesis of multiple published descriptions Lithology: Regolith Reference: Raymond, O.L., Liu, S., Gallagher, R., Zhang, W., Highet, L.M. Surface Geology of Australia 1:1 million scale dataset 2012 edition. Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia). [5]

Neoarchean - Mesoarchean 2500 - 3200 Ma ID: 3189638

Archean crystalline metamorphic rocks Age: Archean (2500 - 3200 Ma) Comments: Yilgarn Craton Lithology: Amphibolite/granulite grade orthogneiss Reference: Chorlton, L.B. Generalized geology of the world: bedrock domains and major faults in GIS format: a small-scale world geology map with an extended geological attribute database. doi: 10.4095/223767. Geological Survey of Canada, Open File 5529. [154]

Data and map coding provided by Macrostrat.org, used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License

References