Roy Hill Mine, Roy Hill Station, East Pilbara Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Roy Hill Mine	Mine
Roy Hill Station	Station (farming)
East Pilbara Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

Located 105 kilometres north of Newman, and west of the Roy Hill Station homestead, at the eastern end of the Chitchester Ranges. It is being actively developed as a new iron ore mine, with production planned to start by 2015 with a 20 year mine life. It is owned by Hancock Prospecting, headed by Gina Reinhart. Gina is the daughter of iron ore mining magnate, the late Lang Hancock. In 2012, Gina was listed as the world's wealthiest woman.

Exploration was started in the area by Hancock Prospecting in 1993, and they have held five tenements over the area since. The area is considered one of the largest un-developed Marra Mamba Iron Formation deposits in Australia. The initial mining will be stage 1, with a proposed stage 2 immediately to the south-east. Mining will take place on the southern flanks of the Chitchester Plateau composed of the Marra Mamba Formation which shows as the escarpment, and the northern fringes of the Fortescue Valley. The Chitchester Plateau is volcanic, tuff, and basalt,intercalated shales and sandstone in strata capped by the Marra Mamba Formation. In the Fortescue Valley there is a 50 metre thick Quaternary alluvium, colluvium and sand overlying the Tertiary Oakover Formation of calcrete, calcarous gravels, and breccia chert, over the Wittenoom Formation of dolomite.

The ore body is part of the Nammuldi Member (the lowest member) of the Marra Mamba Iron Formation. The Nammuldi member is pale chert and cherty banded iron formation, interbedded with thin shales. This unit also occurs in the Christmas Creek and Cloudbreak iron ore mines, held by another company, to the west. The overall structure is simple, with the stratigraphy dipping gently south south-west at 2-10 degrees.

The banded iron mineralisation is restricted to the basal sections of the Nammuldi Member, 2-44 metres thick, averaging 12 metres thick, 1-7 kilometres wide, and striking for 23 kilometres. The central north-west portion of the deposit is a well developed thick microplaty hematite mineralised core, overprinted by later supergene martite-brown goethite mineralisation. The north-west and south-east sections of the orebody is sub-horizontal sheets of supergene martite-brown goethite replacement of banded iron formation with minor ocherous goethite.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

References