The giant Kalgoorlie Gold Field revisited

© 2015 China University of Geosciences (Beijing) and Peking University. The Neoarchaean Kalgoorlie Gold Field contains the giant Golden Mile and world-class Mt Charlotte deposits, which have been the subject of much research for over 100 years. The Golden Mile deposit is a complex array of ductile to brittle vein and breccia lodes that are predominantly hosted in the highly-fractionated Golden Mile Dolerite sill. The Fimiston lodes comprise an array of narrow lodes that evolved broadly syn- to late-formation of the regional D2 NW-trending foliation. The lodes are characterized by pyrite veinlets and disseminations, quartz veinlets and breccias, and banded quartz-carbonate veins with sericite, carbonate, and pyrite-dominated alteration. Bonanza Green-Leader, or Oroya-style, lodes, with grades in excess of 1000 g/t Au, are similar to the Fimiston-style lodes, but are characterized by abundant visible gold, native tellurium and more abundant telluride minerals within roscoelite-bearing alteration zones. The arguably structurally younger Mt Charlotte-style lodes are characterized by a pipe-shaped, coarse-grained quartz, carbonate and scheelite vein-stockwork with distinct vertically-zoned, carbonate-sericite-albite-pyrite ± pyrrhotite dominant alteration assemblages around veins within Unit 8 of the Golden Mile dolerite and porphyry dykes. The network of steep- and gently-dipping extension and shear fracture-fill veins are associated with NE-trending fault sets that cross cut the regional NW-trend. The deposit area is intruded by swarms of porphyry dykes, including syn-volcanic mafic dykes, early and volumetrically most significant c. 2.67 Ga feldspar-phyric porphyry dykes, as well as later c. 2.66-2.65 Ga calc-alkaline hornblende-phyric dykes associated with younger c. 2.65-2.64 Ga lamprophyre dykes. All post-volcanic dykes have similar orientations to the Fimiston lodes. The feldspar dykes are clearly overprinted by all styles of mineralization, although the relationship between hornblende-phyric and lamprophyre dykes and gold mineralization is more ambiguous. Most agree that gold mineralization was post-peak regional metamorphism of host rocks, although its relative structural timing is controversial.Direct timing constraints on gold mineralization indicate that Fimiston- and Mt Charlotte-style mineralization formed within a relative short period of time around 2.64 Ga, and, as such, support a model of progressive deformation of a rheologically heterogeneous rock package late in the structural history. Fluid characteristics, combined with the structural, metamorphic and absolute timing, support description of gold mineralization at the Golden Mile as orogenic and mesozonal, and this allows direct correlation with orogenic gold deposits worldwide, which classically formed during accretion along convergent margins throughout Earth history

The timing of gold mineralization across the eastern Yilgarn craton using U–Pb geochronology of hydrothermal phosphate minerals

The highly mineralized Eastern Goldfields of the eastern Yilgarn craton is an amalgamation of dominantly Neoarchaean granitoid-greenstone terranes and domains that record a history of early rifting, followed by westward directed collision with initial arc formation, collision and clastic basin formation, and final accretion to the western Yilgarn proto-craton between 2.66 and 2.60 billion years ago. The gold deposits that define this region as a world-class gold province are the product of orogenic processes that operated during accretion late in the tectonic history, after initial compressional deformation (D1–D2) and the majority of granitoid magmatism. Minor gold was also deposited throughout the entire tectonic history in magmatic-hydrothermal-related systems. However, such mineralization (mostly < 0.3 g/t gold) is nowhere economic unless it overprints, or is overprinted by, much higher-grade orogenic gold lodes.Robust SHRIMP U–Pb geochronology of gold-related hydrothermal xenotime and monazite supports structural studies that gold mineralization occurred during late transpressional events (D3–D4), shortly before cratonization. However, westward migration of collision and accretion produced a complementary diachroneity in the timing of gold mineralization of 5 to 20 m.y. between c. 2.65 Ma in the east (including Laverton District, Kurnalpi Terrane) to c. 2.63 Ma in the west (including Kalgoorlie Terrane) across the eastern part of the craton. The robust geochronology refutes previous suggestions that significant gold mineralization events extended from DE to D4 in the evolution of the orogen and that the Kalgoorlie gold deposits formed over a period of 45 m.y. The crustal continuum model is applicable within terranes where orogenic gold depositional events were penecontemporaneous, but must be modified to account for diachroneity of orogenic events and gold mineralization across the Eastern Goldfields

Neoarchean orogenic, magmatic and hydrothermal events in the Kalgoorlie-Kambalda area, Western Australia: constraints on gold mineralization in the Boulder Lefroy-Golden Mile fault system

The Boulder Lefroy-Golden Mile (BLF-GMF) fault system is the most intensely mineralized structure (>2150 t Au to 2015) in the Archean Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia. The fault system links the Kalgoorlie and Kambalda mining districts in the Eastern Goldfields Province, a continental-margin orogen subdivided into the western Kalgoorlie ensialic rift and the eastern Kurnalpi volcanic arc. After rifting, the 2.73–2.66 Ga greenstone-greywacke succession in the Kalgoorlie-Kambalda area underwent five phases of orogenic deformation, predominantly during ENE-WSW shortening: D1 upright folding at ca. 2680 Ma, D2 sinistral strike-slip faulting at 2678–2663 Ma, D3 folding of late conglomerate-turbidite successions at 2665–2655 Ma, D4 dextral strike-slip faulting at 2655–2640 Ma and D5 east-northeast-striking normal faulting. Regional prehnite-pumpellyite to greenschist facies burial metamorphism took place during D1 and D3 crustal thickening, and amphibolite facies aureoles formed around granite batholiths during and after D3 at 400 ± 100 MPa pressure. The D2 BLF offsets D1 folds by 12 km SW-side south and contains a porphyry dyke (2676 ± 7 Ma) boudinaged by transtensional oblique-slip along a line pitching 21° southeast. The BLF is linked by transverse D2 thrusts to other sinistral faults recording strike-slip until 2663 ± 7 Ma. Late D2 strike-slip movement alternated with early D3 shortening. D3 thrusts accommodated strain in fault blocks of rigid mafic-ultramafic volcanic rocks consolidated during D1, while the sedimentary rocks in D3 synclines were foliated at high strain.Biotite-sericite alteration and gold-pyrite mineralization in the BLF-GMF system took place at 11 ± 4 km burial depth in faults active during D2 and D3. The Golden Mile (1708 t Au) and other deposits are associated with stocks and dykes of high-Mg monzodiorite-tonalite porphyry, part of a late-orogenic (2665–2645 Ma) mantle-derived suite of adakitic affinity. Hornblende and apatite compositions indicate that these intrusions are characterized by high water contents (5–6 wt% H2O in melt), by high oxidation states (dNNO +1.0 to +2.4 log units) and by igneous anhydrite. Some stocks contain pervasive anhydrite-pyrite mineralization of low gold grade (0.4 g/t). Biotite-sericite-pyrite ore bodies such as those at Kanowna Belle (140 t Au) also replace faulted metamorphic rocks above batholith domes cored by plutons of the monzodiorite suite. The D4 strike-slip faults are barren at Kambalda but control gold quartz-vein ore at Kalgoorlie (2651 ± 9 Ma), and Au-Ag breccia ore at Black Flag (<2648 ± 6 Ma)