Arsenic

specimen number:
2282108

location:
Sarabau Mine, Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia

description:
A mass of native arsenic with minor stibnite. Good locality example for the species from a classic locality.

The Sarabau mine, also historically referred to as the Lucky Hill mine, is located within the Bau mining district near Kuching in Sarawak, Malaysia. Geologically, the deposit is situated along a system of faults and structural joints cutting through carbonate sequences that were intruded by Miocene-aged calc-alkaline granodiorite bodies. Hydrothermal fluids migrating through these contact zones altered the host limestone to form skarn assemblages containing wollastonite, quartz, and calcite, followed by lower-temperature deposition of antimony and gold ores including stibnite, senarmontite, native gold, and the calcium antimony oxide-sulfide mineral sarabauite. Industrial activity in the region began with manual extraction by Chinese miners during the nineteenth century, eventually transitioning to mechanized underground workings. Commercial production of gold and antimony at the site continued intermittently through the twentieth century, with operations active in the 1970s and 1980s before primary extraction ceased in the early 1990s due to changing economic conditions.

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