Sunrise Dam is considered to be a mesothermal gold deposit, typical of many orebodies found in the Archaean greenstone belts of Western Australia.

At Sunrise Dam, gold mineralisation is structurally controlled and vein hosted. The style of mineralisation can be differentiated depending on the structure or environment in which it is hosted. There are three dominant styles recognised:
- Shear-related and high strain e.g. Sunrise Shear Zone;
- Stockwork development in planar faults with brittle characteristics (these occur in all rock types and are commonly concentrated at contacts within the volcanic stratigraphy or the porphyry margin and within hinge positions within the magnetite shales) e.g. Cosmo, Dolly and Vogue orebodies;
- Placer-style mineralisation hosted within the fluvial sediments.

Sunrise Dam is an active underground and open pit mine that is located approximately 205km north-northeast of Kalgoorlie and 55km south of Laverton in Western Australia.

Mining at Sunrise Dam consists of both surface and underground operations. Open pit production began in 1997 and the main pit (Cleo) completed at a final depth of 500m below surface in 2014. Underground mining commenced in 2003 with a number of different mining methods being applied, depending on the style of mineralisation and grade of the geological domain. In 2021, mining commenced at the Golden Delicious satellite pit using open cut mining methods.

The underground mining is carried out by specialised underground contractors (Barminco). The mining methods employed are domain-dependent and relate to the style of mineralisation. Sublevel open stoping methods are the preference in areas where bulk mineralisation occurs (GQ, Cosmo, Dolly, and Vogue). Other areas (Cos East, Sunrise Shear, and Astro) use narrow open-stoping methods. Where possible, all waste from infrastructure development is used to backfill mined stopes.

The open pit mining is also carried out by specialised mining contractors (Carey Mining), and consists of conventional drill and blast and load and haul activities, with ore stockpiled on the surface near the pit crest and overhauled to the ROM pad with the waste material reporting to external waste dumps.

Large surface low-grade stockpiles are used ........

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