Reedy's Goldfield, Cue Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Reedy's Goldfield	Ore Field
Cue Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

Located 50 kilometres north-east of Cue, and about 10 kilometres east of the Great Northern Highway. The area can be accessed via a rough un-signposted gravel road from Tuckanarra. Gold was discovered here by H. Reed in 1899-1900, and a nearby well was named after him. It appears the usual gold rush did not happen here. The field was labelled a duffer, and interest in it soon waned. Drilling by companies found gold at depth despite the lack of alluvial nuggets. Some mining took place at the Emu Mine in the 1920's, and major underground mining took place in the area during the 1930's gold boom. In recent decades the tenements have been lumped together with those south of Meekatharra, and named the Meekatharra Gold Project. Mercator Gold, St Barbara Ltd, GMK Exploration and Metals X Limited have all explored the area in recent times. Several open cuts were developed in the 1980's by Metana Minerals, the last to close 1997.

Historic underground production is 730 000 tonnes at 9.9 g/t Au totalling 230 000 oz. This was dominated by the Triton Mine with 228 000 oz. Open pit mining from the 1980's and 1990's saw a further 20 000 oz averaging 3.8 g/t Au.

The gold mines are located on two shear zones. The first is called the Reedy's Shear Zone and further east the Turn of the Tide Shear Zone, with the Culculli Granite Complex between. The greenstone belt consists of volcano-sedimentary sequences, with gold structurally controlled by the shear contacts of dolerite, basalt, ultramafic schist, quartz-feldspar porphyry and slate. Mineralisation occurs with a zoned alteration envelope dominated by biotite, with some albite, silica, carbonates and sulphides. The lode material is hard, fine grained, dark coloured with faint banding, albitised, with biotite dominating giving the ore a sheen. Gold is contained in pyrites, with lesser pyrrhotite which is gold barren.

The Reedys Shear Zone shows several open pit mines along a 8.5 kilometre north-south strike. Starting from the south is South Emu, North Emu, Rand, North Rand, Triton, Missing Link, Jack Ryan, Callista, Boomerang and Kurara.

Some two kilometres east on the Turn of the Tide Shear Zone are small open pits named (from the south) Turn of the Tide, Midway, Culculli, Culculli North (Thompson's Bore).

The area contains an airstrip, but the former processing plant and buildings of recent decades have been completely removed. Some building ruins, foundations and bits of machinery exist at the site from the 1920's mining period.

The field saw the first prosecution of prospectors (squatters) on a Western Australian goldfield, with 28 men charged in 1935. This law had been in place since 1894, but companies had generally tolerated prospectors on their leases up to this point. As time went on, and mining companies became larger and more powerful, the public found themselves excluded from large portions of Western Australia covered by mining leases.

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