Minjar Gold District, Yalgoo Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Minjar Gold District	District
Yalgoo Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

The Minjar Gold District is approximately 80 kilometres south of Yalgoo, and consists of a series of small gold mines along a north-south strike length of approximately 50 kilometres. The term 'Minjar' appears to be a modern creation, after Gindalbie Gold NL purchased leases covering the area in December 1999, and mined several locations, carting ore from all back to its processing plant in the northern part of the field. The term has continued to be used by subsequent companies.

The northern section of the field is in the Yalgoo Shire, while the southern section is in the Perenjori Shire. At its northern extremity the field is just south-west of the Golden Grove Mindat locality, and at its southern extension borders the Tungsten Trench/Mount Mulgine Mindat locality. Starting from the north is the Austin Mine, M1 Mine, the 600 000 tonne per annum CIL processing plant and accommodation village, the Winddine Well Mine, Silverstone/Eastern Creek Mine, Monaco Mine, Bugeye Mine, Mugs Luck/Mugs Blow/Golden Monarch Mine, and the Highland Chief/Black Dog/Bobby McGee/Trench/Camp mining area. There are several other prospects through the area.

All were probably small historic gold mining locations containing shafts, trenches and small pits from the early 20th Century. These were developed as open pits via modern mining methods by Gindalbie. Limited historic and geology information was found for only three of the locations. No modern geology information was found for any of the sites.

The area was explored by Normandy Mining through the late 1980's and 1990's. Gindalbie Gold Pty Ltd purchased the leases in December 1999 and formed the operating company Minjar Gold Pty Ltd. It constructed a processing plant and between December 2001 and July 2006 mined a series of pits along the length of the field. Total production during the Gindalbie period was 122 630 ounces of gold averaging 3.31 g/t from open pits accessing nine separate deposits, with 105 909 ounces of silver from the M1 pit.

Monarch Gold Mining subsequently purchased the area and placed it in care and maintenance. In 2007 Monarch estimated reserves of 5.1 mt at 2.4 g/t gold for 402 100 ounces in 11 separate deposits. In March 2009 the Minjar leases was purchased by Golden Stallion Mining with a plan to re-open the mines by mid 2010. It operated some mining for six months. The leases were then sold to the Shandong Tianye Group who have explored the area across 2011 to 2012, with the intention of re-starting mining.

The only geology information was a general comment the area contains shear/vein gold, disseminated sulphide gold-silver, volcanogenic base metal sulphides, porphyry copper-gold and skarn tungsten-molybdenum-gold.

Localities in this Region

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References