Cam's Mine, Lake Miranda, Leinster, Leonora Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Cam's Mine	Pit (Flooded)
Lake Miranda	Lake
Leinster	- not defined -
Leonora Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

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A former open pit now flooded.

In 1996, reverse circulation drilling carried out on the Miranda Project by Australian Goldfields NL resulted in the discovery of significant Au mineralisation at the Cams prospect, and further resource drilling in 1997 yielded a resource estimate of 419 kt at 4.7 g/t Au for a total of 63,000 oz Au. Australian Goldfields went into voluntary administration in early 1998, however, the administrator for the company allowed development of the small open cut mine to continue, named Cam's, with the ore being trucked and processed at the Bannockburn gold mine located 65 km NW of Leonora.

In 1999, permission was obtained from the administrators of the Miranda Project to enter and fossick in the Cams mining area. The mining spoil was examined, and on the split surfaces of planar open fractures and joints in large blasted blocks of vein quartz, flat-lying acicular crystals and crystalline coatings of atacamite were noted. These had crystallised on a matrix of limonite-coated massive quartz, or in some cases, limonite-coated micro-crystallised quartz. The vast majority of atacamite crystals showed evidence of blasting and mining damage, however, some specimens up to small cabinet-sized plates with lesser damage were obtainable. Crystals to 5 cm long and 2 - 3 mm wide were noted, however, these larger crystals were invariably badly damaged. Smaller, needle-like prism 1 - 15 mm long were often undamaged, highly lustrous and terminated. The atacamite crystals were flat-lying and randomly-oriented, and on some areas of the matrix 1 – 2 mm atacamite crystals with a contrasting equant habit were noted.

As the pit-bottom was filled with water, it was not possible to examine any atacamite in situ.

The atacamite was confirmed by a combination of XRD and SEM-EDS. The formation of atacamite over other secondary copper species was favoured by the high salinity of the groundwater. This hypersaline water is part of the groundwater plume associated with the nearby Lake Miranda system, and laboratory analysis of groundwater at the Cams pit site conducted by Australian Environmental Laboratories (data given in Anon. 1997) yielded total dissolved solids (TDS) of 230,000 mg/litre, of which the Cl component was 120,000 mg/litre.

Commodity List

This is a list of exploitable or exploited mineral commodities recorded at this locality.

Mineral List

5 valid minerals.