Rosemary

The Rosemary underground gold mine in Western Australia that is wholly owned by Silver Lake Resources, is located just 140 metres from the Daisy Milano mine. It is a part of the Mount Monger goldfields, 50 kilometres south east of Kalgoorlie. Access to the Rosemary gold mine is obtained via the Daisy Milano mine decline from six level.

Mining at the Rosemary Mine is all Carried out with Handheld Equipment

The Mount Monger goldfields is situated along the Mount Monger Road that is bitumen sealed for the first 15 kilometres out of Kalgoorlie when it becomes an all weather unsealed road for the next 35 kilometres. The Mount Monger gold mining project covers an area of 1,728 square kilometres. Ore at the Rosemary mine is extracted by handheld mining equipment only.

Roesmary Mine Ore Processed at Silver Lake's own Processing Plants

Gold bearing ore mined from the Rosemary underground gold mine is processed at either the Randalls or Lakewood gold processing plants, both are owned by Silver Lakes Resources. The gold processing is undertaken in the conventional straightford manner as the ore is of a modest level of hardness, grading at around 80 percent gold. The processing involves the ore being exposed to a gravity circuit before it is cyanide leached. This processing method returns an overall gold recovery rate of around 96 percent.

Rosemary Mine Part of the Greater Eastern Goldfields

The Rosemary mine is situated within the greater Western Australian Eastern Goldfields Province. The first gold mining in the Mount Monger area having taken place in the early 1990's. The Mount Monger goldfield is notable for a series of historic gold mine workings that extend north towards a significant drainage channel. The early miners focused on the sub-cropping mineralisation that is common throughout the area with no early mine extending to anything more than about 80 metres from the surface.

Mount Monger has Rich Gold Mining History

The Mount Monger area has produced gold from the Haoma and Daisy Milano underground mines as well as the Rosemary operation. It also hosts the Maxwell open pit. Potential mining could be developed in promising deposits such as the Magic, Fly Camp, Santa, Cockeyed Bob, Imperial, Majestic, Wombola and Lorna Doone which could be developed commercially as open pits or underground operations in the future.

A large mining company undertook a gold study of the Mount Monger area in 2003 when it identified mineralised structures with the potential to hold between two and 4.5 million ounces of gold to a depth of 500 metres in nine independent zones.

Most gold production from the Mount Monger area occurred from 1916 when a number of mines were developed near the Mount Monger homestead. These included mines such as; Maranoa, Haoma, Milano, Pauline, Leslie, Big Bull, Daisy and Caledonian. The average gold production from thse mines was more than one ounce of gold to a tonne of ore. However, lack of sufficient water, the high cost of cartage to get the ore to gold treatment plants in Kalgoorlie, the cost of mining narrow stopes with hand held mining equipment and the lack of labour during the war years, all took its toll and mining in the area virtually ceased except for a couple of small scale operations continuing.

Silver Lake Resources acquired the Mount Monger tenements in 2007 and began production at the Daisy Milano mine later the same year. It aslo purchased the Lakewood gold processing facility the same time. By June 2013 Silver Lake Resources had produced 400,000 ounces of gold from its Mount Monger operations.