Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):	29° 52' 21'' South , 115° 17' 2'' East
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):	-29.87266,115.28415
GeoHash:	G#: qd9yp3g75
Locality type:	Mine
Köppen climate type:	Csa : Hot-summer Mediterranean climate

This is a significant mineral sands mine globally, and mineral sands as a whole is the sixth biggest mining industry in Western Australia.

The deposits contain no mineral specimens, unless of course you collect sand.

The deposit was discovered in 1970. Several companies opened mines, and there was a gradual consolidation process. Jennings Mining Ltd commenced in 1974, Allied Eneabba Ltd 1975, and Western Titanium Ltd in 1976. The last company became AMC. They acquired Jennings in 1978, Allied Eneabba in 1986, and RGC Mineral Sands Ltd in 1992. The company formed Iluka Resources Ltd in 1998, which has continued to mine mineral sands at Eneabba to the present day.

Mining occurs to a depth of 30 metres, laterally over a large area, south-east of Eneabba, and east of the Brand Highway, in a north-south band. The company is a major producer of zircon and high grade titanium oxide products of rutile. Mines include Allied Tails, IPL South and IPL North. Mining occurs partly on agricultural land, and native vegetation, in part the South Eneabba Nature Reserve. Due to the flora rich countryside in the region, the company has onerous rehabilitation measures, although it is unlikely to ever be like it was originally.

The deposits are low grade heavy mineral sands, with numerous concentrated strands. It is located in the Eneabba Plain, a northern extension of the Bassendean Dune System of the Swan Coastal Plain, between the coastal belt and Gingin Scarp. It was formed early Pleistocene or late Tertiary, as dunes with concentrated mineral sands of ilmenite, zircon, rutile and leucoxene.

Sands are transported to the Newman Concentrator, 2 kilometres east of the town, which produces high grade mineral sand concentrate (98% heavy mineral concentrate). The ore is de-slimed and washed through a series of spiral separators that exploits the difference in specific gravity of the sands with the lighter quartz and clay. The concentrate is then sent to the South Secondary Concentrator, about 10 kilometres south of the town for further separation and drying. It then goes to Narngulu for processing and export.

Commodity List

This is a list of exploitable or exploited mineral commodities recorded at this locality.

Mineral List

5 valid minerals.

Rock Types Recorded

Regional Geology

This geological map and associated information on rock units at or nearby to the coordinates given for this locality is based on relatively small scale geological maps provided by various national Geological Surveys. This does not necessarily represent the complete geology at this locality but it gives a background for the region in which it is found.

Click on geological units on the map for more information. Click here to view full-screen map on Macrostrat.org

Quaternary - Cenozoic 0 - 66 Ma ID: 715513

dunes 38496 Age: Cenozoic (0 - 66 Ma) Description: Dunes, sandplain with dunes and swales; may include numerous interdune claypans; may be locally gypsiferous Comments: regolith; synthesis of multiple published descriptions Lithology: Regolith Reference: Raymond, O.L., Liu, S., Gallagher, R., Zhang, W., Highet, L.M. Surface Geology of Australia 1:1 million scale dataset 2012 edition. Commonwealth of Australia (Geoscience Australia). [5]

Cretaceous - Jurassic 66 - 201.3 Ma ID: 3187905

Mesozoic sedimentary rocks Age: Mesozoic (66 - 201.3 Ma) Comments: Perth Basin Lithology: Sedimentary rocks Reference: Chorlton, L.B. Generalized geology of the world: bedrock domains and major faults in GIS format: a small-scale world geology map with an extended geological attribute database. doi: 10.4095/223767. Geological Survey of Canada, Open File 5529. [154]

Data and map coding provided by Macrostrat.org, used under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License

References

External Links