Tuckabiana

The Tuckabiana gold mine is located approximately 550 kilometres northeast of Perth and 25 kilometres east of Cue, in the Murchison province of Western Australia. The mine that is part of the larger Murchison Goldfield Project, is fully owned by Silver Lake Resources and is situated between the town of Cue and the gold rich Mount Morgan. The Murchison Goldfield Project consist of 15 separate tenements that cover an area of 238 square kilometres and includes the Moyagee and Comet gold mines as well as the Tuckabiana mine.

Gold Discovered at Tuckabiana in 1915

The Tuckabiana gold deposit was discovered in 1915 and has been mined intermittently ever since exploiting gold rich mineralised pods that are hosted within iron formations. Before open pit mining became popular after 1988, the Tuckabiana mine had produced 53,000 ounces of gold at an average grade of 18 grams of gold a tonne. Between the years of 1988 and 1997 around six million tonnes of gold bearing ore was processed from the area surrounding the Tuckabiana mine for a total production of more than 500,000 ounces of gold. Most of the gold produced during this period was mined in 17 separate open pits, all located within the Silver Lake Resources tenement area.

Silver Lake Resources Refurbished the Tuckabiana Mining Project in 2010

In 2010, Silver Lake Resources acquired a 1.2 million tonnes a year mill in readiness to pour its first gold from the Tuckabianna underground mine in 2011. The redeveloped Murchison Gold Project at this time consisted of four underground mines, the Tuckabiana, Mount Eelya, Moyagee and Comet along with 14 open pits. At the time of the re-development the Murchison Goldfield Project contained 1.9 million ounces of gold resources and 0.4 million ounces of gold in reserves. It its first full year under the ownership of Silver Lake Resources it was estimated the Murchison Group would produce 100,000 ounces of gold. However, fate was to intervene and Silver Lake Resources were forced to cease production after only seven months of production.

Tuckabiana Gold Mine put on Care and Maintenance in 2014

In March 2014, Silver Lake Resources took the decision to close down its Murchison Gold mines, which included the Tuckabiana operation and place it on care and maintenance. The closure cost the jobs of 42 Silver Lake Resources employees and 85 contractors. The company blamed the closure on the costs involved in maintaining the 250 bed accommodation camp for its fly-in-fly-out workforce and to focus its attention on its more productive Mount Monger mine located near Kalgoorlie ñ Boulder. At the time the Tuckabiana open pit contained 8,220 million tonnes of gold bearing ore grading at 2.2 grams a tonne that would return around 570,000 ounces of gold. The Tuckabiana underground mine was reported to contain up to 2.430 million tonnes of ore grading at 4.0 grams a tonne that would be expected to return about 310,000 ounces of gold.

Tuckabiana Mill Leased to BNM Australia to Process Tailings

Since the closure of the mine the privately owned mining company, BNM Australia Group, which enjoyed the financial backing of American metal merchant, Auramet Trading, had been leasing the Tuckabiana mill to process the Murchison mine's tailings. After about 30 months of this work BNM itself struck hard times and by November, 2015, it too suspended operations at the Tuckabiana mill.