Prince Lyell Mine, Mount Lyell Mines, Queenstown district, Tasmania, Australia

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A large, operating, mostly underground copper-gold-silver mine. The deposit is a volcanogenic deposit with disseminated sulphides hosted by altered Cambrian acid volcanics. The Mt Lyell mine is one of the oldest significant mines in Australia, and has been operating almost continually for nearly 120 years. Over twenty separate deposits have been worked but the Prince Lyell deposit is the only currently active mine. The mines have produced about 1.4 Mt of copper, 45 t of gold 733 t of silver and some lead and zinc from about 120 Mt of ore in its lifetime (to 2002) and, depending on good copper prices, there are sufficient reserves to enable the mine continuing for another fifty years or more

The Mt Lyell copper-gold mines are mineralogically most important as the co-type locality for the rare copper-iron-tin sulphide mawsonite, named after Sir Douglas Mawson, the Antarctic explorer and geologist. However, many other rare minerals are also recorded from these mines, including betechtinite, florenceite, woodhousite, stannoidite, hessite, jalpaite, magnesiofoitite, zunyite and stromeyerite. At least 85 species have been reported from the mines, many being found as attractive specimens in late stage, alpine-type veins.
REF:
Hills, P.B., 1990: Mount Lyell copper-gold-silver deposits. In: Hughes, F.E., (ed.) 1990: Geology of the mineral deposits of Australia and Papua New Guinea. Monog. 16. Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, Melbourne. 1257-1267.


R. Bottrill & P. Olubas (submitted) The Mt. Lyell Mines. Australian Jnl. Mineralogy

Mineral List

Acanthite Aikinite Albite Alunite Anatase Anhydrite Ankerite Arsenopyrite Baryte 'Bastnäsite' Berzelianite Betekhtinite Biotite Boothite Bornite Bournonite Calaverite Calcite Chalcanthite Chalcocite Chalcopyrite Chamosite

Clausthalite Clinochlore Clinozoisite Copper Covellite Cubanite Cuprite Delafossite Dickite Digenite Djurleite Dolomite Enargite Florencite-(Ce) Fluorapatite Fluorite Galena Goethite Gold Gorceixite Gypsum Hematite

Hessite Illite Jalpaite Jarosite Kaolinite Linnaeite Magnesiofoitite Magnetite Malachite Mawsonite Molybdenite Monazite-(Ce) Muscovite Natroalunite Paragonite Pentlandite Petzite Pyrite Pyrophyllite Pyrrhotite Quartz Renierite

Rutile Siderite Silver Sphalerite Stannoidite Stromeyerite Svanbergite Tellurobismuthite Tennantite Tenorite Tetrahedrite Topaz Uraninite Variscite Vivianite Wittichenite Woodhouseite Zircon Zunyite

85 entries listed. 83 valid minerals.