The West Burra copper deposit, which lies in hilly country 3.5 miles west-southwest of Burra, was discovered in January 1913 and worked as a single 40-acre mining claim until that claim was cancelled on 18/2/1919. Information about the mine has been gained from reports of past inspections which are published in contemporary issues of the South Australian Mining Review, and more particularly from eyewitness interviews conducted with a miner once employed at this mine, Mr J. Isaac, who in January 1964 wrote to the Minister of Lands about his concerns over the remaining economic potential of the copper lodes he had helped extract. SA Mines Department officers visited the mine site on 14/4/1964 and sampled the old mine dumps for ore and host rock specimens to submit for mineralogical and petrological analysis. There is no bedrock outcrop in the immediate vicinity of the mine. From regional mapping data compiled by the department, rocks in the mine area have been described as tillite, greywacke, arkose and argillite, which belong to the Umberatana Group. The mine workings are filled with broken rock and are no longer accessible. Most of the 26.6 tons of hand-sorted copper ore produced came from a stope above the 50-foot level that was opened in a zone of copper carbonate enrichment. Below this zone, chalcopyrite (altering to covellite) and pyrite are sporadically distributed within a crystalline marble vein which dips at 62 degrees to the south-east. The extent and grade of this vein apparently diminishes rapidly with depth down to the water table at 130 feet. This lode appears to have been too low in grade to have been mined at a profit, as the best copper grades (average assay value 29.27% Cu after ore sorting) were confined to a 3-9 inch wide seam in the hanging wall. A surface geochemical survey conducted over the mine area has failed to detect any base metal anomaly. No further work is recommended.