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Location: 1 km E from Norseman, Western Australia, Australia
Level 2, 46 Ventnor Ave, West PerthPerthWestern Australia, Australia6005
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The project area lies at the southern extent of the Norseman - Wiluna Greenstone Belt of the Eastern Goldfields Province of the Yilgarn Block, Western Australia. The regional geology of the Norseman area has been subdivided into four formations being the Penneshaw Formation, Noganyer Formation, Woolyeenyer Formation and the Mt Kirk Formation. The oldest unit is the Penneshaw Formation which has been dated at 2938±10 Ma (U-Pb zircon, (Hill et al., 1992). The western part of this unit is dominated by amphibolite with minor sediment and felsic rocks, whereas the eastern part comprises intercalated amphibolite and highly deformed felsic rocks.The overlying Noganyer Formation consists of sediment iron formation (jaspilite), siltstone and sandstone, and minor carbonaceous shale.Overlying the Noganyer Formation with a conformable or gently unconformable contact is the Woolyeenyer Formation. The Woolyeenyer Formation is dominated by mafic volcanic rocks with minor conformable ultramafic units and sediment bands. These rocks are intruded by mafic dykes with a dominant northeast to northwest trend that are interpreted to be syn-volcanic. The Woolyeenyer Formation is regarded as unconformably overlain by sedimentary and felsicvolcanic to volcaniclastic rocks of the Mt Kirk Formation that have been intruded by thick, differentiated mafic sills. The contact between these units is marked by the regionally extensive Abbottshall Chert comprising silicified banded and fine-grained sediment.Intrusive rocks in the Norseman region include the Buldania granite, which intrudes the Penneshaw Formation; the Pioneer Granite and similar poorly exposed domal granites that intrude the sequence along the western margin of the greenstone belt; felsic porphyry to granitoid dykes intrude all units and predate mineralisation, and Proterozoic mafic dykes that occupy a Yilgarn-wide set of linear brittle fractures.All the Norseman reefs are typical Archean lode systems and the orebodies are almost completely structurally controlled. They all share common features which indicates their genesis:1.Most of the high grade ore zones occur where veins intersect ‘gabbro’ intrusions, and specific oriented contacts are particularly favourable. This is most likely a result of competency contrasts which allow preferential propagation of cracks and other openings within the coarser grained rocks, and the amount of veining is controlled by the orientation of the contact relative to stress directions.2. Zones where NNE- and west-dipping felsic, dacitic porphyries are intersected by the reefs tend to be zones of intense structural complexity and gold grades are even more variable than usual. In some reefs these can be zones of high grades, and in others, low grades. This reflects the geometry relative to the local direction of maximum compression, and therefore whether the structures are tight or open.3. Most reefs have only very narrow (a few metres at most) alteration selvages. In some cases, these selvages host high gold grades but in all cases the grade drops off very quickly away from the quartz vein. The northern deposits usually have wider alteration haloes caused by more reaction of ore fluids with host rocks (Archer and Turner, 1998)
