Curlew Emerald Mine, Shaw River District, East Pilbara Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Curlew Emerald Mine	Mine
Shaw River District	Mining District
East Pilbara Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

The Curlew Emerald Mine is approximately 90 kilometres west of Marble Bar and 5 kilometres north of the Woodstock-Marble Bar Road, just east of the Mt Webber iron ore turn-off.

Oral history suggests the emerald location was discovered in the 1920's, but its history up to 1976 is unknown. It was mined actively between 1976-1981 by a group managed by Bill Moriarty, who is an active specimen miner in the Kalgoorlie area. The production per year was about 4.5 kilograms of facetable emerald and forty kilograms of non-facetable material. Further, each year on average 20 'king' stones were recovered, 15 to 20 carat in size in the rough. All the emerald was sold to an Indian dealer for the jewellery trade. Specimens are thought to be rare from this period as the material was sold into the jewellery and artisan trade, without provenance.

The mine was sold in 1981 to Warren and Strang (Aust.) Ltd, who mapped the deposit and conducted trial mining. In 1985, Elders Resources Ltd, purchased the mine, but found more beryl than emerald. With mining equipment at the site also in a state of disrepair, they concluded the mine would be suited more to an individual or small syndicate. No buyer was found by 1989, and the licence was given-up. The mine, and a large portion of the surrounding land appears at present (2012) to be under lease by an Australian mineral dealer.

The diggings at the mine run in a north-south direction approximately 500 metres, along the eastern flank of a valley. Small pegmatites and quartz veins with beryl mineralisation are sandwiched between splays of north-south faults, just west of the Shaw Batholith.

The eastern footwall is quartzite, and the western hanging wall is interbedded chloritic amphibolite and schist. Within the western section quartz and pegmatites, no more than 1.5 metres wide by 150 metres long, are enveloped by deformed biotite or phlogopite schists.

The dark mica schists within the quartz veins and pegmatites contain gem quality emerald crystals and green beryl. As is typical of Western Australian emerald, most of the stones are not world class, and often contain inclusions and are cloudy. Size ranges from less than a millimetre to several centimetres in diameter.

The pegmatites are composed of quartz-albite with accessory green beryl, scheelite, coarse molybdenite crystals, and fine-grained purple fluorite.
Alluvial cassiterite, monazite, formanite, and tauteuxenite has been found in the immediate area. The writer observed poor quality amazonite at the northern extremity of the deposit.

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References