The origin and evolution of mineralizing fluids in a sediment-hosted orogenic-gold deposit, Ballarat East, Southeastern Australia

AM Fairmaid; MA Kendrick; D Phillips; B Fu

Journal article

The origin and evolution of mineralizing fluids in a sediment-hosted orogenic-gold deposit, Ballarat East, Southeastern Australia

AM Fairmaid, MA Kendrick, D Phillips, B Fu

Economic Geology | Published : 2011

DOI: 10.2113/econgeo.106.4.653

Abstract

The hydrothermal fluids responsible for gold mineralization at the Ballarat East gold deposit (the second largest orogenic gold deposit in the western Lachlan orogen) are thought to have links to a variety of processes, including metamorphism, sedimentation, and/or magmatism. In the current study, noble gases and halogens have been used as fluid tracers to reevaluate the origin and evolution of the gold-related fluids at the Ballarat East deposit. Gold-bearing quartz and carbonate veins from the Ballarat East contain low salinity (∼4 wt % NaCl equiv) aqueous (H2O) and mixed H2O-CO 2 fluid inclusions. These fluid inclusions have variable molar Br/Cl values of between 1.2 × 10-3 and 2.9 × 10-3..

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University of Melbourne Researchers

David Phillips Author

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Grants

Awarded by ARC

Awarded by Australian Research Council

Funding Acknowledgements

This work was funded by ARC linkage grant LP 0882157. APT also received support from an Australian Postgraduate Award, a Baragwanath Award, and the pmd<SUP>o</SUP>CRC. MK was supported by an ARC Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship (DP0879451). The authors thank Stan Szczepanski for technical assistance in the noble gas laboratory, Darren Osborne (Lihir Gold Ltd.) for providing access to mine data and samples, and Andy Tomkins (Monash University) for facilitating access to the Linkham microthermometry equipment. Comments by reviewers T. Graupner and F. Stuart and associate editor S. Gleeson greatly improved the manuscript.