Grant's Patch, Black Flag Goldfield, Kalgoorlie-Boulder Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Grant's Patch	- not defined -
Black Flag Goldfield	Ore Field
Kalgoorlie-Boulder Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

Grant's Patch is approximately 10 kilometres south-east of Ora Banda, south of the Ora Banda-Broad Arrow Road, and north-west of the Mount Pleasant mines. It covers several small historic and modern mines at the northern end of the Black Flag Goldfield.

From a rock collecting viewpoint, the name refers to an opalite fossicking area, now out of bounds due to active gold mines nearby. It also refers to a now long gone small settlement which in the early 1900's serviced local prospectors. Historically and in modern times it refers to an area covering the mines itself.

This last aspect had caused several more grey hairs on the writer's head. Information is often listed as Grants Patch with no details of the specific mine. This has occurred even in modern times where exploration companies will take over a package of leases, calling it the Grant's Patch project.

The area follows a similar history to many other goldfields in the region. Prospectors develop shallow pits and underground workings following high grade narrow veins and lodes from the late 1890's to early 1900's. Minor renewed activity occurs in the 1930's, mainly prospectors, and limited company involvement in this area. From the 1980's onwards, companies take over large sections of the area, and develop small to medium sized open pits on an oxide resource, with the ore carted to the Paddington mill south of Broad Arrow.

Recent history has seen the area explored and limited mining by Ora Banda Amalgamated NL late 1930's, United Goldfields Corporation late 1970's, West Coast Holdings 1980's, Centaur Mining late 1980's, Cazaly 2004, Carbine Resources 2007-2008, Phoenix Gold 2010-2015, Evolution Mining 2015, Chaffers Mining 2015, Keras Resources 2015 to 2020, amongst others.

Norton Goldfields Limited at the time of writing (2016) controls most of the Black Flag Goldfield, and indeed some surrounding areas. Various pits have been developed by the company for short periods, before being abandoned for the next project. It also leases out areas to other companies. Keras Resources is active in the Grant's Patch area from 2016, under a 5 year tribute agreement. There was once a public road to Black Flag, but this has been closed, and no entry signs are posted across the entire region, due to active gold mining in parts.

Limited and general geology information was found for Grant's Patch. Gold is mostly found in the area in the Victorious Basalt. The stratigraphy is a basal basalt unit, overlain by komatiite, upper basalt, felsic volcano sedimentary formation, mafic and ultramafic rocks, overlain again by a coarse clastic sedimentary unit. Layered and mafic sills are found at various layers. The area shows broad folding with cross cutting brittle-ductile faults at variable directions. Gold is found in wide shear zones containing Fe stained quartz veins, the lodes generally trending north-south, and dipping south-west.

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References