The Carcoar uranium prospect is within the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, NSW. The first signs of uranium were noticed in 1894 (1) and reported in 1896 by Card (2), making it Australia's first documented uranium occurrence. It was apparently considered for development to extract very small quantities of radium, although information is extremely hard to find. According to an old newspaper from Blayney (West Macquarie), dated 12 August 1905 (3) :"Radium at Carcoar
A wire from Carcoar to the "Herald" says that for some considerable time past it has been known that the cobalt mine situated at the south east corner of the municipal boundary contained, in addition to cobalt, an ore called copper uranite. Samples of this ore have been tested and found to contain about 1.7 percent of uranium, the parent of radium. In order to ascertain what quantities could be obtained a number of samples of ore taken from various parts of the mine were collected on Saturday, and will be forwarded to Professor David this week for test. Mining authorities state that if the results prove satisfactory the value of the property will become great, as the present price of radium is stated to be 184,000 (pounds) per oz."A mine operated at Carcoar from 1888 to 1895, extracting ~113 tonnes of ore to produce 12.34 tonnes of Cobalt (4,5). No further information is known as to the nature of the ore mined.
If anyone has any more information, please let me know !
(1) M Solomon & D I Groves, 1994, The Geology and Origins of Australia's Mineral Deposits. Oxford Science Publications, Monographs on Geology and Geophysics (24), page 287.
(2) Card, G W, 1896, Mineralogical and Petrographic Notes, No. 2. Geological Survey of New South Wales, Report 4 (1), Sydney, NSW.
(3) Information courtesy of historical research by Robyn Ryan.
(4) I R McLeod, 1966, Cobalt. In : Australian Mineral Industry - The Mineral Deposits, Bur. Miner. Res. Geol. Geophys. Aust. Bull. 72, pp 163-170.
(5) Bureau of Mineral Resources, Geology & Geophysics, 1947, BMR - Mineral Resources of Australia Summary Report No. 32 - Cobalt.
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