Surprise Gold Mine, Yaloginda Goldfield (Bluebird; Eight Mile; Yallowgindat), Meekatharra Shire, Western Australia, Australia
| Latitude & Longitude (WGS84): | 26° 42' 11'' South , 118° 26' 9'' East |
|---|---|
| Latitude & Longitude (decimal): | -26.70308,118.43594 |
| GeoHash: | G#: qek0p4f7m |
| Locality type: | Mine |
| Köppen climate type: | BWh : Hot deserts climate |
The Surprise gold mine is 500 metres north of the Bluebird processing plant, and 200 metres west of the Great Northern Highway. It used to be far closer to the highway. In 2008, cracks began to appear in the ground between the highway and the open pit. Fearing the highway would collapse into the pit, mining was suspended, and in part caused the downfall of the operating company Mercator Gold which went into administration. The highway was rebuilt 200 metres further east. During the eighteen months Mercator was able to mine the pit, it produced 44 500 ounces of gold.
Commodity List
This is a list of exploitable or exploited mineral commodities recorded at this locality.Mineral List
1 valid mineral.
Regional Geology
This geological map and associated information on rock units at or nearby to the coordinates given for this locality is based on relatively small scale geological maps provided by various national Geological Surveys. This does not necessarily represent the complete geology at this locality but it gives a background for the region in which it is found.
Click on geological units on the map for more information. Click here to view full-screen map on Macrostrat.org
| Quaternary 0 - 2.588 Ma ID: 930479 | colluvium 38491 Age: Pleistocene (0 - 2.588 Ma) Description: Colluvium and/or residual deposits, sheetwash, talus, scree; boulder, gravel, sand; may include minor alluvial or sand plain deposits, local calcrete and reworked laterite Comments: regolith; synthesis of multiple published descriptions Lithology: Regolith Reference: Raymond, O.L., Liu, S., Gallagher, R., Zhang, W., Highet, L.M. Surface Geology of Australia 1:1 million scale dataset 2012 edition. Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia). [5] |
| Neoarchean - Mesoarchean 2500 - 3200 Ma ID: 3188304 | Archean volcanic rocks Age: Archean (2500 - 3200 Ma) Comments: Yilgarn Craton Lithology: Greenstone belt; mafic-ultramafic volcanic rocks Reference: Chorlton, L.B. Generalized geology of the world: bedrock domains and major faults in GIS format: a small-scale world geology map with an extended geological attribute database. doi: 10.4095/223767. Geological Survey of Canada, Open File 5529. [154] |
Data and map coding provided by Macrostrat.org, used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
References
