Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):	28° 5' 50'' South , 119° 14' 54'' East
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):	-28.09746,119.24854
GeoHash:	G#: qehb1t40k
Locality type:	Mine
Köppen climate type:	BWh : Hot deserts climate

The abandoned pits are 20 kilometres south-west of Sandstone, and about 3 kilometres south-east of the Bulchina mine, and the Sandstone-Paynes Find Road. The site contains two small abandoned open pits, and a third pit between, which appears to have been filled with mullock from the other two. At the time of writing the site also contained a small processing plant.

The northern pit is called Goat Farm, middle Eureka, and Plum Pudding is the southern pit. The site holds the CIP processing plant, built by Herald Resources before Troy Resources, and then Black Oak Minerals took over. It has been mothballed since 2010, and is called the Sandstone Mill.

Modern production commenced in 1993 by Elmina NL, producing 10 000 ounces from the Bull Oak mine laterites. In 1994 Herald Resources constructed the above processing plant, and open pit mining from Twin Shafts. Subsequent production came from the Oroya, Goat Farm, Shillington, Two Mile Hill, Plum Pudding and Bull Oak open pits until 1999. Total production was 1.9Mt at 2.0 g/t for 125 000 ounces of gold.

In 1998, Troy Resources acquired the Bulchina project from Cambrian Resources, and in 1999 purchased the CIP plant from Herald. Mining began at Bulchina and they obtained 230 000 ounces at 3.62 g/t to April 2004, when it closed. The plant continued to process low grade stockpiles and waste material at 504 000 tonnes at 1.26 g.t. Production then swung east to the Lord Henry and Lord Nelson mines until 2010 when these closed. Black Oak Minerals subsequently acquired the leases.

Black Oak Minerals in a 2015 quarterly report state the site contains 50 Kt of ore with 30 Koz of gold at 1.69 g/t. It provides no other information, and the location does not appear to be a priority.

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: 692852

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: 3191865

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