Ravensthorpe, Ravensthorpe Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Ravensthorpe	- not defined -
Ravensthorpe Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

Ravensthorpe is a small town 40 km inland from the south coast of Western Australia.

This is a highly mineralised district with complex Li-Ta-Sn pegmatites, Ni deposits in greenstones, and Cu-Au deposits (Ravensthorpe was historic copper mining district before the Ni and pegmatitic deposits were discovered).
More info and minerals are needed to be added.

The Ravensthorpe district sits at the junction of three rock systems; the Yilgarn Craton, Mt Barren Quartzites, and an igneous intrusion. The Yilgarn Craton covers much of Western Australia, and is Archaean granite rocks, 2700 million years old. The Mt Barren Quartzites are uncommon, and aged 1500 million years. They were once sand-dunes, covered,heated and squeezed under immense pressure when Australia broke away from Antarctica. They are very hard and have resisted weathering, the most obvious examples in the region being the Stirling Ranges, Mt Ragged, and the Barren Ranges. Underlying this is the Ravensthorpe Greenstone Belt, of interest to miners of Gold, Copper, and Nickel. The area has seen several new mines open recently (2012), in particular for Nickel and Lithium.

The area first came to the attention of miners in 1898, when Jin Dunn found Gold at Cocanarup, west of Ravensthorpe. This led to a shortlived goldrush to this area, known as the Phillips River Goldfield. As a result of the goldrush, Ravensthorpe was gazetted as a town in 1901, with an initial population of 500. By 1909 it had a population of 3000, and Copper had taken over as the main mineral of importance. At this time. fifty three Gold and Copper mines were operating in the district. A large smelter was built just south of the town to service the mines, and its black slag heap can still be seen by the Hopetoun Road. By 1918 the smelter and most of the mines had closed due to low Copper prices. Between 1956 and 1972, the Elverdton Copper Mine operated twelve kilometres south of the town. The old mines were left to fossickers, until the mining boom of the past ten years which has seen much exploration work, and new mines open.

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