OREAS 53P

Reference material OREAS 53P is one of four porphyry copper-gold standards prepared from ore samples from the Northparkes Mine, central western New South Wales, Australia.

Mineralisation in the region is hosted by a sequence of late Ordovician to Early Silurian volcanics, intrusives and sediments that occur within the Bogan Gate Synclinorial Zone of the Lachlan Fold Belt. The western portion of this zone is dominated by volcanics and host to the Goonumbla porphyry copper-gold deposits. The Late Ordovician Goonumbla Volcanics host the Northparkes deposits and are interpreted to have erupted from shallow water to partly emergent volcanic centres. They exhibit a broad range in composition from shoshonite through to latite to trachyte.

Coeval sub-volcanic quartz monzonite porphyries (and attendant mineralisation) have intruded the volcanics. They are generally small, sub-vertical, pipe-like intrusives. Typically the mineralised porphyries contain plagioclase and quartz phenocrysts in a matrix of fine-grained potassium feldspar and quartz with minor biotite and hornblende.

Copper-gold mineralisation occurs as stockwork quartz veins and disseminations associated with potassic alteration. This alteration is intimately associated spatially and temporally with the small finger-like quartz monzonite porphyries that intrude the Goonumbla Volcanics. Sulphides are zoned laterally from the centres of mineralisation. The central portions are bornite-rich with minor chalcopyrite, zoning outward through equal concentrations of bornite and chalcopyrite, to an outermost chalcopyrite-rich zone. Pyrite increases outward at the expense of bornite.