OzGold 2019 - Australian Gold Deposits

Porter GeoConsultancy conducted a geological tour to a selection of the most important gold deposits from Archaean to Phanerozoic in age, representing the range of gold mineralisation styles in Australia.

This tour was the final of the International Study Tour series of professional development course offered to geoscientists in the minerals industry by PorterGeo.

The itinerary took in:

• a selection of the most important gold deposits across Australia,
• the most of the significant styles of gold mineralisation found in Australia,
• deposits from Archaean to Neoproterozoic to Palaeozoic in age,
• deposits spread across the continent from New South Wales to Victoria to Western Australia in both the Yilgarn and Paterson.

Participants were able to take any 1 or more days, up to the full 7 days of the tour, as suited their budget, availability and interest.

Photo Album - Who went & what they saw.

Deposits on the itinerary included:

Southeastern Australia
• Cowal - low to intermediate sulphidation epithermal, quartz-carbonate-base metal-gold deposits in the Ordovician Macquarie Arc of central NSW,
Mon 4 November, 2019
• Northparkes - alkalic porphyry Cu-Au deposits hosted by an Ordovician shoshonitic volcano-intrusive centre of the Macquarie Arc, 100 km NE of Cowal,
Tue 5 November, 2019
• Fosterville - high grade, orogenic gold deposit hosted by Ordovician turbiditic sedimentary rocks of the Lachlan Orogen, near Bendigo in central Victoria,
Wed 6 November, 2019
Archaean Yilgarn Craton, Eastern Goldfields Superterrane, Western Australia
• Kalgoorlie Superpit at Fimiston - a single orogenic gold mineralised system hosted by Neoarchaean greenstones, Australia's largest gold deposit,
Thu 7 November, 2019
• St. Ives - Invincible - a major distributed cluster of orogenic gold deposits in a Neoarchaean greenstone sequence,
Fri 8 November, 2019
Neoproterozoic Paterson Orogen, NW Western Australia
• Telfer - vertically stacked stratabound quartz reefs and stockworks of gold-copper mineralisation hosted by domed Neoproterozoic sedimentary rocks,
Sat 9 November, 2019
• Travelling, Pilbara to Perth
Sun 10 November, 2019
Archaean Yilgarn Craton, Southwest Terrane, SW Western Australia
• Boddington - a Neoarchaean, structurally controlled, intrusion-related gold-copper stockwork, lens and vein deposit in southwestern Western Australia,
Mon 11 November, 2019

This tour also served as a pre-conference field trip to the NewGenGold 2019 Conference held in Perth, Western Australia on 12 and 13 November, 2019.

It was the fourth tour PorterGeo had arranged in conjunction with this biennial series of conferences that began in 1995. The program of all of these conferences has been were facilitated by geological consultant Keith Yates and Associates, and convened and managed, initially by the Australian Mineral Foundation until 2001, and then by Paydirt Media from 2003.

As with the previous conferences in the series, this event was focussed on the discovery case histories of the most recently found gold deposits, or 'soon-to-be mines' throughout the world. The program comprised fourteen 45 minute papers on as many deposits, from ten countries, presented over two days, each addressing how a discovery was made.