Tungsten – White Rock Deposit, NSW

The White Rock tungsten deposit is located near Rye Park in South East New South Wales, about 250km west of Sydney and consist of EL9521 and MLA530.

Tungsten–tin mineralisation at White Rock is associated with a magnetite-bearing skarn on the margin of a granite. The skarn is flat lying and close to the surface. Tungsten as scheelite, is best developed close to the granite contact and tin in more distal parts of the skarn.

The Rye Park area straddles the contact between two major lithological and tectonic units of the Lachlan Fold Belt (Molong-South Coast anticline to the east; Cowra-Yass syncline to the west). The Cowra-Yass zone comprises the Silurian Douro Group rocks that host the tungsten mineralisation at Rye Park. Granite bodies have intruded this sequence.

Historical activity at the White Rock Mine included mining some 500 tonnes of ore material that remains in dumps on site. This mining occurred sometime in the interval 1916 – 1938.

A JORC resource by Paradigm Metals of 260,000 tonnes at 0.70% WO3 + 0.15% Sn02 was proven and published in previous exploration (White Rock resource) but was not considered economically viable at the time. A more recent calculation gave a resource of 400,000 tonnes @ 0.8% WO3 and 0.15% SnO2 (Shorin 2012). Metallurgical studies are continuing and indicate a recovery of 80% WO3 is achievable.

Potential for an increase in the resource lies with extensions of the deposit to the northeast.