|
Bellevue |
|
|
Western Australia, WA, Australia |
| Main commodities:
Au
|
|
 |
|
|
 |
Super Porphyry Cu and Au
|
IOCG Deposits - 70 papers
|
All papers now Open Access.
Available as Full Text for direct download or on request. |
|
|
The Bellevue gold deposit is located 35 km NNW of Leinster and 400 km NNW of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia (#Location: 27° 38' 23"S, 120° 33' 31"E).
The historic Bellevue deposit lies within the northern section of the Kalgoorlie Terrane of the Yilgarn Craton, and is hosted by a regionally extensive suite of basaltic rocks (the Mount Goode Basalt) in the west-central part of the Wiluna-Agnew greenstone belt. The succession in the district comprises an ultramafic zone, felsic volcanics and sediments, capped by the Jones Creek conglomerate (Brotherton and Wilson, 1990).
The ore is hosted by a 10 m thick, north striking, 65° W dipping mylonitic shear zone within altered fine grained basalt. Gold occurs in association with massive and dissimenated sulphides, mainly pyrrhotite, with lesser pyrite and chalcopyrite in quartz breccias and sheared basalt. The sulphides in the latter are present in the shear foliation or disseminated within the basalt groundmass, or as thin quartz-sulphide veins and boudins within the shear foliation. Shoots are in tensional and dilational zones in the shear. Discontinuous mineralisation is also found on the shear margins of the footwall and hanging wall (Brotherton and Wilson, 1990).
Gold was first discovered at Bellevue by prospectors in 1895. Alluvial gold and near surface mineralisation was initially exploited by the prospectors, before Bellevue Limited was formed to undertake underground mining. Operations commenced in 1896 and continued until 1912 when the company was wound up. During this period, cumulative production was 0.252 Mt @ 16 g/t for 4.043 t Au. The mining title was held by a number of owners over the next 75 years with little production. A brief campaign in 1952 yielded 27.5 kg of Au from a few hundred tonnes of ore. Exploration in the 1980s culminated in an Ore Reserve in 1989 of 0.807 Mt @ 11.7 g/t Au, comprising Proved Reserves of 0.413 Mt @ 12.4 g/t Au, + Probable Reserves of 0.394 Mt @ 10.9 g/t Au, (Brotherton and Wilson, 1990).
This reserve was the focus of an underground mining operation between 1988 and 1997 that produced 1.65 Mt @15 g/t Au for 24.9 t of Au. Subsequently, although the area was held by a number of companies, little exploration was undertaken until Bellevue Gold Limited commenced drilling in 2017. That program has outlined 56 t of contained gold at an average grade of 11.1 g/t Au from the original Bellevue Lode and three additional mineralised centres. These centres are part of the greater Bellevue Lode System which forms a continuous 4 km long zone of mineralisation composed of high grade quartz lodes in a NNW trending corridor of multiple shears within the Mount Goode Basalt. The mineralisation is shear controlled and characterised by a high pyrrhotite content with minor chalcopyrite and fine grained visible gold. There are 4 high grade structural domains within this lode system, the Bellevue, Tribune, Viago and the Southern Belle lodes. To 2019, these lodes had been tested no deeper than 600 m below surface.
Bellevue Lode and its immediate surrounds contain an additional 2.3 Mt @ 9.6 g/t Au for a total of ~22 t of contained gold.
The Viago and Viago North High Grade Lodes were discovered in June 2018 targeting offsets of the main Bellevue Lode System. High-grade gold mineralisation extends over a total strike length of at least 1500 m and in mid 2019 had an inferred resource of 1.36 Mt @ 16.1 g/t Au for ~22 t of contained Au.
The Tribune High Grade Lode was intersected in late 2017, and is located ~400 m west of the main Bellevue Lode. It has a strike length of at least 1300 m with Inferred Resources of 1.0 Mt @ 8.1 g/t Au for 9.3 t of contained gold.
The Southern Belle lodes represent a southern extension of the historically mined Bellevue deposit with Inferred Resources of 0.4 Mt @ 11.1 g/t Au for 4 t of contained gold.
The post 1997 resources and lode descriptions are drawn from the Bellevue Gold Limited website in August 2019.
For detail consult the reference(s) listed below.
The most recent source geological information used to prepare this decription was dated: 2019.
Record last updated: 27/8/2019
This description is a summary from published sources, the chief of which are listed below.
© Copyright Porter GeoConsultancy Pty Ltd. Unauthorised copying, reproduction, storage or dissemination prohibited.
Bellevue Gold
|
|
|
|
Brotherton R L, Wilson P A 1990 - Bellevue Gold deposit: in Hughes F E (Ed.), 1990 Geology of the Mineral Deposits of Australia & Papua New Guinea The AusIMM, Melbourne Mono 14, v1 pp 319-321
|
|
Porter GeoConsultancy Pty Ltd (PorterGeo) provides access to this database at no charge. It is largely based on scientific papers and reports in the public domain, and was current when the sources consulted were published. While PorterGeo endeavour to ensure the information was accurate at the time of compilation and subsequent updating, PorterGeo, its employees and servants: i). do not warrant, or make any representation regarding the use, or results of the use of the information contained herein as to its correctness, accuracy, currency, or otherwise; and ii). expressly disclaim all liability or responsibility to any person using the information or conclusions contained herein.
|
Top | Search Again | PGC Home | Terms & Conditions
|
|
