Plutonic Gold Mine (Plutonic Dome Project), Neds Creek Station, Meekatharra Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Plutonic Gold Mine (Plutonic Dome Project)	Mine
Neds Creek Station	- not defined -
Meekatharra Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

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The Plutonic gold mine is 180 kilometres north-east of Meekatharra, and 13 kilometres east of the Great Northern Highway.

The deposit was discovered in 1988 by Great Central Mines, and mining started in 1990 initially as an open pit, and then underground mining from 1995. Great Central sold the mine to Plutonic Resources, and this company was purchased by Homestake Mining in 1998, which was taken over by Barrick Gold in 2001. At the time of writing (2013) the mine was up for sale again.

The mine is hosted by the Plutonic Well Greenstone Belt, a 50 kilometre long south-west to north-east belt, with the mine found in its south-west portion. The mine lies north of the Yilgarn Craton, within the Marymia Inlier, and the greenstone belt is largely covered by sand and shallow sediment with only limited outcropping. The belt is composed of granite, gabbro, low rated volcanic rocks, and mafic to ultramafic intrusive rocks.
Band iron formations occur in its north-east section.

Gold in hosted in what is called the Mine mafic unit of basaltic flows sandwiched between hanging and footwall ultramafic units. The unit has been deformed during a period of thrusting producing parallel layered shears on the contact, and localised link shears within the unit.

The gold is found in a series of discrete sub-parallel north-west trending lodes, 1-10 metres thick by 1-3 metres wide, dipping 45-50 degrees north-east. They have a strong albitised cores with 5-10% sulphides mainly arsenopyrite, and pyrrhotite, with lesser pyrite, chalcopyrite, and sphalerite. This graduates into phlogopite clay with subordinate calcite, chlorite and amphibole. Gold as native metal is disseminated throughout the groundmass, within the silica gangue, with arsenopyrite, and rarely with pyrite.

At the western end of the field is the accommodation village, airstrip, mine offices and processing plant. It is also the site of the largest pit, named Plutonic, at 1200 metres by 800 metres, to 175 metres deep. There are 37 other open pits mainly striking for 50 kilometres north-east. Some were developed by other companies with the Marymia processing plant at the northern area of the field. Eventually they were combined, with all ore sent through the processing plant at the Plutonic pit.

Commodity List

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Mineral List

Mineral list contains entries from the region specified including sub-localities

16 valid minerals.

Rock Types Recorded

Rock list contains entries from the region specified including sub-localities