Moolart Well Gold Mine, Duketon Area, Duketon Goldfield, Laverton Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Moolart Well Gold Mine	Mine
Duketon Area	Area
Duketon Goldfield	Ore Field
Laverton Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

The Moolart Well Gold Mine is 130 kilometres north of Laverton. The deposit was discovered in 2001, and mining began in 2010, with a seven year expected life span. The site contains an accommodation village, airstrip and processing plant. The mine is owned by Regis Resources Limited, who also operate the Rosemont and Garden Well gold mines, 30 kilometres to the south in the Erilstoun Goldfield.

The deposit is hosted in the Duketon Greenstone Belt. The sequence at the mine includes high Mg basalts with interbedded chert and sulphidic sediments, striking north-south and dipping east. The basalts are overlain by an ultramafic unit 50 to 100 metres thick, and forms the Hanging Wall of the mine sequence. The Footwall is at the contact of the ultramafic unit with a regional dextral slip fault.

The mine is sited in a shallow north-south trending palaeochannel, overlying the residual regolith and basement rocks. The channel contains maghemite rich gravels, multigenerational iron rich alluvium and colluvial sediments. This is overprinted variably by pisolith development and mottling.

The near surface portions down to 6 metres is gold barren. Further down in the sediments is a high grade gold supergene zone. The mine is classed as a mesothermal gold deposit.

Most gold is found in a large low grade oxide gold deposit, in deeply weathered Archaean ultramafic-mafic volcanic sequence, above the base of weathering about 70 metres down from the surface.

The Moolart Well deposit is described as gold-sulphide mineralisation 70m below the surface, within quartz lodes and alteration zones, beneath a weathered zone. There are two zones to the deposit, the first being a flat laterite zone and secondly a deeper oxide zone in clays. The laterite zone is an average depth of 20m, over an area of 5 kms by 1.5 kms, with an average thickness of 3.8m. The oxide mineralised zone beneath this goes down to a maximun depth of 70m.

Mineralisation is structurally controlled in fresh rock, and to a lesser degree in the oxide zone. Sulphides include pyrite, arsenopyrite and trace chalcopyrite, sphalerite and galena, all disseminated.

The mine has a 2015 JORC Reserve of 6.5 Mt @ 0.92 g/t yielding 194 000 ounces, and a JORC Resource of 47.3 Mt @ 0.72 g/t yielding just over 1 million ounces of gold. The mine produces about 100 000 ounces of gold per annum.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References