Mimetite

specimen number:
2133410

location:
Mt. Bonnie, Northern Territory, Australia

description:
Lustrous green crystals of mimetite across matrix. In good condition.

The Mt. Bonnie mine, located in the Pine Creek Orogen of the Northern Territory, Australia, is a historic base-metal and precious-metal operation. Geologically, the deposit is a stratabound, volcanic-hosted massive sulfide (VHMS) system situated within the Paleoproterozoic Koolpin Formation, where primary iron, zinc, lead, copper, silver, and gold sulfides underwent intense surface weathering to create a rich, oxidized gossan. The gossan was first discovered and prospected for gold and silver in the late nineteenth century, around 1885, leading to sporadic, small-scale underground mining via shallow shafts. Modern industrial open-cut mining operations were launched by a joint venture around 1983 to extract the remaining high-grade silver and gold reserves from the oxide zone, alongside localized processing of the ore. This primary phase of modern commercial extraction was relatively brief and concluded around 1985 when the easily accessible oxide ore was exhausted, leaving the deeper primary sulfide resources as a target for subsequent exploration campaigns.

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