Silver Valley Mine, Murray Downs Station, Barkly Region, Northern Territory, Australia

Latitude & Longitude (WGS84):	20° 59' 59'' South , 134° 53' 27'' East
Latitude & Longitude (decimal):	-20.99995,134.89087
Köppen climate type:	BWh : Hot deserts climate

The Silver Valley Mine is 25 kilometres east north-east of the Murray Downs pastoral station homestead, although probably much longer by road. Access is from a track leaving north from the Kurundi Road (Hatches Creek Road), 5 kilometres after it splits from the road heading for the Elkedra Station. The track appears very rough, indistinct, with several difficult creek crossings, heading into rugged and remote hilly countryside. Explorer AMI Resources describes several groups of workings consisting of shallow pits and shafts, and an oral source some old timer huts remaining, but little could be confirmed on satellite images. Mindat map is based on general maps highlighting the mine, and without confirmation is approximate.

Lead-silver prospects with minor copper, zinc and bismuth. It consists of a number of east to north-east trending quartz filled shear zones in the Edmirragee basalt, as the core of a large domal structure. There are sub-ordinate dolerite sills, and granophyre intruding Kurinelli and Taragan Sandstone.

Worked briefly around 1954, with a small stamp mill also erected, producing 1.25 tonnes of lead concentrate from 5 tonnes of ore. Ahmad states a sample from the dump taken in 1978 registered 600 g/t Ag, while another sample was 25% Pb, 10% Cu and 240 g/t Ag. Explored by CRA Exploration Pty Ltd 1978-1979, Meekatharra Minerals 1988-1991, Arafura Resources NL 2004-2009, and AMI Resources Pty Ltd 2011-2016.

While AMI's reporting was the most comprehensive, it focussed on geochemical analysis of surface samples, with little interest in species, the structure underground, or how the deposits were formed.

AMI states there are four prospects, within several hundred metres of each
other, each denoted by minor shallow workings. It also shows two new un-named prospects nearby. Samples from surface mullock dumps gave high readings variously of silver, lead, gold, copper, bismuth, cobalt, antimony, and zinc. However without drilling,the five years of sampling provides little useful information on how extensive or otherwise the underground mineralisation is.

Dull massive galena, and sometime copious malachite are confirmed by AMI. It states most of the quartz is white and bucky, but takes an interest for sampling purposes in boxwork, lattice, cavity filled, and chalcedonic quartz, which is relatively rare. Other species mentioned it question marks.

AMI states local prospectors have found many gold nuggets in the area with metal detectors, amounting to 150 kg between 2010 to 2016. (However it provides no further details as to whether it is talking specifically about the Silver Valley area, or the region in general. Elevated gold was found in some of the samples as a geochemical analysis, but makes no mention of visible gold).

Mineral List

7 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

Cenozoic 0 - 66 Ma ID: 711208

sand plain 38499 Age: Cenozoic (0 - 66 Ma) Description: Sand or gravel plains; may include some residual alluvium; quartz sand sheets commonly with ferruginous pisoliths or pebbles; local clay, calcrete, laterite, silcrete, silt, colluvium 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]

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

References

External Links