Burnakura Goldfield, Meekatharra Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Burnakura Goldfield	Ore Field
Meekatharra Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

Located 50 km south of Meekatharra. The goldfield is approximately 10 kilometres east of the Reedy's Goldfield, listed under the Cue Shire. It can be accessed from this goldfield, but at the time of writing active exploration was being undertaken in the area, and was off limits.

Burnakura is better known as a gold mine, and it is assumed the species listed for this site relate to a nearby prospect. This base metal deposit was first explored from 1974 to 1976 by Seltrust, finding anomalous copper, lead, silver, and zinc in several gossans. Further explored by Esso 1977 to 1978, and Giralia 1983 to 1985, but found to be sub-ecomonic.


Gold was discovered here around 1896. At this time prospectors Lloyd and Anderson were successfully developing a number of leases. Major mines include Federal City which had a ten head battery and cyanide plant, Alliance with a five head battery, New Alliance which was owned by a syndicate of three local men and at its height employed thirty men, and Coronation which was adjacent to New Alliance to its south.

In 1909 it was reported little work was happening at the mines and a newspaper article in 1918 bemoans the fact the field was largely abandoned. Like many Western Australian gold mines, there was limited activity during the gold boom of the 1930's.

The field sprang to life again in the early 1990's when Extract Resources Limited in partnership with Tectonic Resources Limited started two open pits next to each other called Lewis and Reward Pits. Underground mining started in 2005. This ceased in 2007, and later in the year the mine was purchased by Canadian ATW who re-opened the mine in 2009. A series of erratic veins with structural offsets forced the mine into care and maintenance shortly after. In mid 2012 Kentor Gold again re-opened the mine, and transported equipment from the closed down Indee gold mine in the Pilbara, to supplement the existing processing plant at Burnakura

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