Honeymoon Well complex, Lake Way Station, Wiluna Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Honeymoon Well complex	Complex
Lake Way Station	Lake
Wiluna Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

Nickel prospect.


Disseminated and massive Ni sulphide mineralisation, hosted in a variety of komatiitic rocks within the Honeymoon Well ultramafic complex (extending over a 10 x 2 km area), located in the northern part of the 2700 Myr old Agnew-Wiluna greenstone belt. The ultramafic complex is a structurally thickened part of the Mt Keith Ultramafic Sequence. This sequence also hosts the nickel deposits at Perseverance, Yakabindie and Mount Keith.



The prospects contain some spiinifex textured rocks which have shown partial melting and recrystallisation at high temperatures, then slow cooling, forming rocks which are the only type of their kind in the world.

Honeymoon Well is the general name for an ultramafic Ni complex 45 kilometres south of Wiluna, the northern most nickel deposit in the Agnew-Wiluna Greenstone Belt. Honeymoon Well contains the prospects Harrier, Corella, Hannibals, Wedgetail and the small Harakka prospect.

The prospects are covered by 50-120 metres of overburden, of sands, grits, transported clays, minor basal gravels, and a 30-60 metre residual regolith. The regolith contains the upper most partially silicified goethite rich saprolite, then green-grey clay rich lower saprolite, then saprock overlying the bedrock.

The reference notes other species not mentioned under information on the individual prospects. Spaces between spinifex textured olivine contain polygonal aggregates of partially altered clinopyroxene, orthopyroxene, plagioclase and spinel. A wide range of volanic rocks in contact and sometimes included in the ultramafic complex contain tholeiitic basalt and related gabbro, andesite, dacite, and minor rhyolite. Also felsic and intermediate volcaniclastic rocks, minor pyritic shale and chert. The basalts and gabbro contain actinolite, albite, chlorite, quartz and leucoxene. Some of the gabbro contains metamorphic magnetite formed by alteration of igneous ilmenite. Andesite and dactic rocks contain feldspar, quartz, chlorite, mica, actinolite and carbonate. The metasomatised rocks contain carbonate, mica, and minor arsenopyrite and tourmaline.

There is also minor to trace amounts of partly altered chromite within stichtite aggregates in olivine adcumulate. Chromite equant grains are rimmed and veined with magnetite, and at Wedgetail and Corella is partially skeletal chromite. Pyroaurite contains iowaite in high density veins in lizardite dominant rocks. Also found in these veins is brucite, carbonate, magnetite, serpentine, and trace gypsum. In high Ni ratio rocks millerite has formed along grain boundaries and fractures within pentlandite and heazlewoodite, or finely intergrown with violarite.

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References