Nillumbik Gold

Marker key

Timeline Drag on the timeline to select a period.

Historical maps

Survey sheets and geological plates

Select an image to enlarge it. Georeferenced maps can be shown over the interactive map.

Field videos

Local prospectors on camera

Field videos by local prospectors. Select a thumbnail to play (YouTube, privacy-enhanced embed). Captions are YouTube auto-captions with names corrected.

Sources

Where every claim came from

What the rocks and official records show

Geological Survey of Victoria (GSV) data for Nillumbik and the surrounding goldfields (Warrandyte, Kinglake, Yarra Glen, Yan Yean and the Plenty, down to the Yarra at Templestowe). Each layer can be shown on the interactive map.

The Geological Survey of Victoria (GSV) is part of Earth Resources Victoria. It keeps the state's geological maps, mine records and historic reports. Its public map viewer is called GeoVic. You can open the anonymous viewer without an account. Some layers, historic mining activity reports and data export need a free registration. Old reports and plans can be searched with the GSV Search Assistant.

This tab explains the six GSV layers that this page can draw. The data was copied from the Victorian open data service on 21 October 2026.

Bedrock of Nillumbik and the surrounding goldfields (Warrandyte, Kinglake, Yarra Glen, Yan Yean and the Plenty, down to the Yarra at Templestowe)

The area is in the Melbourne Zone of the Lachlan Fold Belt. The bedrock is a thick sequence of marine sandstone, siltstone and shale from the Silurian to Early Devonian periods. These rocks were laid down as turbidites, which are layers deposited by underwater sediment flows.

The 1:50 000 geology layer maps these units across the area: the Anderson Creek Formation, the Melbourne Formation, the Dargile Formation (on the 1:250 000 map), the Humevale Siltstone and the Wilson Creek Shale. The Anderson Creek Formation is named after Andersons Creek at Warrandyte, where gold was found in 1851. It is the oldest unit exposed in the core of the Warrandyte anticline, which is an arch-shaped fold in the rock. Gregory (1902) called this fold the "Warrandyte anticlinal". Jutson (1910) described a zone of bending and faulting along its axis, where the gold-bearing quartz reefs occur.

Devonian dykes and a quartz-diorite intrusion cut the sediments in the Warrandyte and Queenstown fields (Jutson 1910; Junner 1914). A dyke is a sheet of igneous rock that cooled in a crack. Younger rocks cover some of the bedrock. The Greensborough Basalt, a Miocene lava flow, caps ridges near the Plenty River and Diamond Creek. The Yarra Fault is the named fault that crosses the area in the 1:50 000 fault layer.

The gold is mostly in narrow quartz reefs, and some reefs also hold stibnite (antimony sulphide) and carbonate minerals. The reefs fill gaps that opened in faults and fold hinges. This is reef gold, not the large alluvial (stream-laid) deposits found elsewhere in Victoria. The mineralisation is dated to the Late Devonian, about 380 to 370 million years ago. Antimony is recorded at the Caledonia Mine, the Golden Crown, the Diamond Creek Mine and several other places in the GSV mineral occurrence records.

What the GSV layers show

Mine sites

Historic mines and mineral occurrence sites from the VICMINE database. Most are gold sites. Positions are accurate to about 250 m. Each point shows the site name, the main commodity, the site type and the goldfield name.

Shafts and pits

Mine shaft points, plus small outlines of former mine and quarry features on Crown land. The outlines come from a 2022 to 2025 government survey that used LIDAR (laser height scanning from aircraft) to find holes and dumps. Each feature shows its type, its name and the source it came from.

Mineral deposits

Named deposits with a commodity and a size class. Some are points. Some are large areas, such as the single area that covers the Andersons Creek, Queenstown, Diamond Creek and Warrandyte goldfields. The area outlines are the closest official stand-in for goldfield boundaries.

Mining tenements

Areas where a licence to explore or mine has been granted, both current and historic. Current tenements are drawn with a solid red outline. Historic ones are grey. Owner names are kept. Owner addresses and phone numbers were removed.

Geology units

The Seamless Geology 1:50 000 map. Each polygon is one rock unit, coloured by its age and rock group. The colour key appears in the Marker key when the layer is on. Each polygon shows the unit name, map symbol, rock type, age and a short description.

Faults

Fault lines from the 1:50 000 map, plus 1:250 000 faults where the larger map adds one. They are drawn as dashed lines. Each shows the fault name (if it has one), its type and the map scale.

Tenements today

These three tenements are the current ones shown in the data. The status is as recorded on the fetch date, 21 October 2026, and may have changed since.

EL008779: exploration licence held by Providence Gold Pty Ltd. Granted 4 March 2026. Expires 3 March 2031. It covers about 300 km².
MIN4928: mining licence held by Rudis Mining Pty Ltd. Status: Pending Renewal. The listed expiry date, 21 April 2025, has passed.
MIN4788: mining licence held by Rudis Mining Pty Ltd. Status: Pending Renewal. The listed expiry date, 21 April 2025, has passed.

Pending Renewal means the holder has applied to renew the licence and the decision is not recorded in the data. Check the Earth Resources register before you plan any fieldwork. Other tenements in the layer are older exploration licences, work authorities and quarry licences.

GSV publications for this area

Maps and reports named in the GSV records and used for this research:

Geological Survey of Victoria, 1909. Warrandyte Goldfield, 1:15,840 geological map. Plan GF58.
Jutson, J.T., 1910. The structure and general geology of the Warrandyte goldfield and adjacent country. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria 23, 516–554. Biodiversity Heritage Library
Jutson, J.T., 1911. Parishes of Nillumbik, Bulleen, Warrandyte, Nunawading and Ringwood, showing geological structure, 1:31,680 map. Plan 1903/G/1.
Junner, N.R., 1913. General and mining geology of the Diamond Creek area. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria 25, 323–353. Biodiversity Heritage Library
Junner, N.R., 1914. Notes on the geology of a portion of the Parish of Queenstown. Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria 27.
Forbes, W., 1896. Part of the Parish of Warrandyte, with locations of quartz reefs and dykes, 1:31,680 map. Plan 1903/G/5.
Moon, R.A., 1893. Quarter sheet 40 NW, 1:31,680 geological map (also on the Maps tab).
VandenBerg, A.H.M., 1997. Melbourne SJ 55-5, 1:250,000 geological map, 2nd edition.

The GSV published maps index lists 57 maps and reports that cover the area. The list loads with the geology data.

Loading the map index…

Data and licence

Service: Victorian Government Open Data Platform, WFS 2.0.0, https://opendata.maps.vic.gov.au/geoserver/wfs.
Layers used: minsite, shaft, former_mining_features_crown, mineral, mineralp, minten, sg_geological_unit_50k, sg_shear_displace_struc_50k, sg_shear_displace_struc_250k and gsvmi.
Fetched: 21 October 2026.
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
Attribution: Geology and mining data: © State of Victoria (Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action / Geological Survey of Victoria), CC BY 4.0, via opendata.maps.vic.gov.au.
The data was clipped to a box around the study area (longitude 144.93 to 145.48, latitude −37.86 to −37.49). Coordinates were rounded to five decimal places. Most attribute fields were removed, so each feature keeps only the few fields shown in its tooltip. Use GeoVic or the open data service for the full records.

Contested

Claims that failed verification

These are shown for transparency. Don't rely on them.