Beete Gold Mine, Esperance Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Beete Gold Mine	Mine
Esperance Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

The Beete Gold Mine is found in easterly dipping metamorphosed Archaean tuffs, sediments and greenstone, including gabbro, basalt and ultramafics, trending north north-east. Younger granites and pegmatites intrude the greenstone to the east.

Gold is found in narrow quartz veins, and also occurs occasionally adjacent to the Hanging Wall or Footwall shear. A milky quartz vein occurs below the mineralisation, and provides a useful marker horizon. The veins strike in the same direction as the host rock, but vary considerably with dip. The north end of the deposit has a complex geology.

Gold production occurred from 1958-1965, 1968, 1974 and 1976. There are no production records before 1974, but since amounts to 2816 tonnes at 24.8 g/t yielding 2300 ounces. Central Norseman Gold explored the site 1978-1980, and again in 1992-1993 by J & L Mortin. There are a total of 7 shafts on the deposit.

Beete is 50 kilometres south of Norseman, and approximately 20 kilometres east of the Norseman-Esperance Highway. The deposit was discovered in 1958 by Harold Eldridge, who proceeded to sink a shaft and mine here until 1965. Mining ceased when the veins at the north and south ends of the workings narrowed and became uneconomic. High grade gold is found at the No. 3 level of the underground workings.

Prior to 1989, it was thought the area was part of the generally gold poor Albany-Fraser geological province. Studies by the Geological Survey of Western Australia, and the Australian Geological Survey Organisation, found it was part of the Yilgarn Craton, with its gold bearing greenstone belts.

As such, Beete represents the most southern mined gold deposit in the Eastern Goldfields region, and one of the most southerly gold mines in Western Australia. Technically the deposit is just within the Shire of Esperance (a stones throw distance- as we say here), and within sight of the northern wheatbelt border in the Salmon Gums region. However, it made little sense having the deposit under the Esperance Shire, and all the other gold mines in the region to the north under the Dundas Shire.

The site contains a wooden headframe from the Eldridge Mine, but no modern mining has taken place, and appears even the historic mining has left a small footprint on the landscape.

References

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