Mount Morgans Gold Mine, Mount Margaret Goldfield, Laverton Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Mount Morgans Gold Mine	Mine
Mount Margaret Goldfield	Ore Field
Laverton Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

Abandoned gold mine.

Approximately 50 kilometres south-west of Laverton. The mullock plateaus can be seen on the north side of the old Laverton-Leonora Road. One historic stone building remains and is the only part of the site open to the public. Infomation signs are present detailing the history of the mine.

Gold was discovered here in 1896, and to 1952 produced 328 000 oz of gold at 15 g/t. mostly from underground mining of the Westralia deposit. Alf Morgans was instrumental in the development of the mine, and was later to become Premier of Western Australia. A second period of mining occurred from 1988 to 1997 via an open pit. During this period 917 000 oz at 3.2 g/t gold was recovered. Mining ceased in 1998 and the processing plant was later removed.

Initially during this second period,mining was conducted by Plutonic Resources, purchased by Homestake Mining Company in 1998, this company in turn purchased by Barrick Gold in 2001, who sold the Mount Morgans Mine to Range River Gold in 2009.

Range River started a third period of mining of The Craic and Transvaal deposits. There is also a Ramonie deposit. Ore was being treated at the Granny Smith Mine processing plant south of Laverton held by Barrick. Range River operated the Mount Morgans mine from 2009 to 2011, and at this point the company went into administration having run out of funds to develop it further. The mine went into care and maintenance. The company was able to resurrect its activities in 2012, but at present (2013) there is no indication mining will re-start at Mount Morgans.

Mount Morgans is a banded iron formation gold deposit in an Archaean greenstone belt, 3 kilometres east of the Celia Lineament, a major deformation zone. Tholeiitic basalt and lenticular banded iron formation horizons are intruded concordally and subconcordally by quartz-feldspar porphyries. Ultramafic rocks comprise the wallrocks.

The gold deposit is situated in a fault stepover, at the intersection of a major sinistral north north-west trending shear zone, and a sinistral north north-east shear and fault zone. Gold ore shoots occur in the banded iron formations at the structural intersection.

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