Saddleback Mine (Worsley), Boddington, Boddington Shire, Western Australia, Australiai
Regional Level Types | |
---|---|
Saddleback Mine (Worsley) | Mine |
Boddington | - not defined - |
Boddington Shire | Shire |
Western Australia | State |
Australia | Country |
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Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):
32° 51' 9'' South , 116° 25' 54'' East
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):
Type:
Köppen climate type:
Nearest Settlements:
Place | Population | Distance |
---|---|---|
Boddington | 926 (2012) | 7.1km |
Crossman | 370 (2011) | 17.5km |
Quindanning | 163 (2018) | 20.3km |
Wandering | 355 (2016) | 28.9km |
Dwellingup | 347 (2012) | 37.8km |
Mindat Locality ID:
20140
Long-form identifier:
mindat:1:2:20140:8
GUID (UUID V4):
23f3a1fb-78d8-4920-9994-33d62fd5676a
An aluminum mine in bauxite ore. Owned by a consortium of Reynolds Aluminum (40%), Royal Shell (30%), Broken Hill Proprietary (20%) & Kobe Aluminum of Japan. Mine has a capacity of 100,000 tons/year of alumina.
Ref.: Mining Annual Review (1985): 330. An aluminum mine in bauxite ore. Owned by Reynolds Metals (40%). Initial capacity was 1 million tons/year of ore.
This originally started as a group of Perth entrepreneurs in the 1960's who tried to develop bauxite resources near Boddington. It wasn't till 1980 that BHP Billiton began construction of a mine here, 12 kilometres south of Boddington, with production starting in 1984. The ore is transported 51 kilometres by conveyor to their Worsley Alumina Plant just north-west of Collie. The Alumina is shipped from the port of Bunbury. It is the world's fifth largest bauxite mine. Proposed mining stretches eventually in discrete areas from west of Brookton to south of Quindanning.
The mine is located east of the Darling Fault, in the eastern part of the Darling Ranges (plateau). The underlying bedrock is medium grained granite and sometimes granitoids of mainly Archaean age. Above this to the surface is a laterite zone containing 25-30% bauxite. The ore bodies are irregular and lenticular, with the largest being 20 mt over 600 hectares, down to smaller ore bodies to 0.35 mt. The total estimated reserves is 400 mt.
The bauxite developed as erosional residual soil material up to 25 metres thick. This laterite profile starts at the top with a surface iron rich cap layer, up to 6 metres thick, containing 40-50% Fe, and abundant pisolites over the gabbro. Over the granitiods it is less than 2 metres thick with significant quartz sand. The next layer is the bauxite zone of enriched Al with significant Fe and pisolites at the top grading to clay at the bottom. This layer is 5.5 metres thick on average, but can be up to 20 metres thick. The third layer is a clay zone containing bauxite and kaolinite weathered bedrock, with a white clay band near the base. The last layer is weathered bedrock with a sharp contact with the overlying bauxite.
There are several pits over a wide area, the Mindat map highlighting one at the time of input.
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Standard Detailed Gallery Strunz Chemical ElementsCommodity List
This is a list of exploitable or exploited mineral commodities recorded at this locality.Mineral List
2 valid minerals.
Rock Types Recorded
Note: data is currently VERY limited. Please bear with us while we work towards adding this information!
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Alphabetical List Tree DiagramGallery:
List of minerals arranged by Strunz 10th Edition classification
Group 4 - Oxides and Hydroxides | |||
---|---|---|---|
ⓘ | Quartz | 4.DA.05 | SiO2 |
Group 9 - Silicates | |||
ⓘ | Kaolinite | 9.ED.05 | Al2(Si2O5)(OH)4 |
List of minerals for each chemical element
H | Hydrogen | |
---|---|---|
H | ⓘ Kaolinite | Al2(Si2O5)(OH)4 |
O | Oxygen | |
O | ⓘ Kaolinite | Al2(Si2O5)(OH)4 |
O | ⓘ Quartz | SiO2 |
Al | Aluminium | |
Al | ⓘ Kaolinite | Al2(Si2O5)(OH)4 |
Si | Silicon | |
Si | ⓘ Kaolinite | Al2(Si2O5)(OH)4 |
Si | ⓘ Quartz | SiO2 |
Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality
Australia
- Western Australia
- West Australian ElementCraton
- Yilgarn CratonCraton
Australian PlateTectonic Plate
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