Becher gold prospect, Mallina Station, City of Karratha, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Becher gold prospect	Prospect (Abandoned)
Mallina Station	Station (farming)
City of Karratha	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

An undeveloped gold prospect.

Located 6 kilometres south-west of the Withnell deposit.

The deposit is a zone of anastromizing quartz veins, as a epithermal deposit. It was discovered in 1997 by Resolute Ltd. There are two vein sets dipping moderately to steeply west. The veins range from 10 cms to over 10 metres thick. The veins contain earlier sets of buck quartz, and quartz-tourmaline (schorl?), the veins trending east-west. Tourmaline is the major mineral making up to 80% of the veins.

Wall rock is altered to quartz-sericite-ex pyrite, locally brecciated, and cut by chalcedony veins. This assemblage can be traced for 50 metres from the vein system, at which point it grades to a quartz-sericite-chlorite assemblage. Kaolinitic zones occur locally within the quartz-sericite-ex pyrite assemblage.

The deposit contains a major quartz-chalcedony component, massive, weakly banded. Other quartz types include pseudo acicular bladed pseudomorphs after carbonate or sulphide, and crustiform varieties.

Bladed textures are also preserved by limonite pseudomorphs. Some chalcedony is weakly banded as grey, white and pink bands, 2 to 20 mms thick, and colloform in habit.

Breccia occurs in varying degrees as veining in wall rocks, with chalcedony infill, to breccia crustiform clasts surrounded by later crustiform quartz, to breccia with complex clast and matrix types.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References