Whirling dervish

Whirling Dervish uses the Carosue Dam gold processing plant that is only one kilometre from its open pit operations near Laverton in Western Australia. This allows for cost effecting processing of its ore zone that returns 2 grams of gold per tonne from its 25 to 30 metres wide deposit.

Explorative drilling Increases Whirling Devish Potential
Successful exploration drilling has increased open pit resources at the Whirling Dervish gold mine for its owner, Saracen Minerals Holdings Limited. The drilling also proved a substantial underground resource that has the company currently evaluating the feasibility of creating an underground gold mine at the open pit site. Whirling Dervish now has a gold resource approaching 1.1 million ounces.

Gold Resources Indicate Substantial Underground Deposit at Whirling Dervish
Saracen Mineral Holdings Limited is in the process of making a decision on whether to access the lower reaches of the Whirling Dervish deposit from the Whirling Dervish open pit itself or from the nearby Karari open pit. The Karrari open pit access has the benefit of allowing bottom-up mining methods which incorporate a combination of larger scale open stoping with up-hole benching. The result being lower mining costs. The underground gold resource at Whirling Dervish has now been increased by 938,000 tonnes grading at 3.3 grams a tonne which will equate to 100,000 additional ounces. A further resource will also be added from strikes along the hanging wall and footwall lodes.

Production Increase at Whirling Dervish Open pit
Increased production from the Whirling Dervish open pit has occurred as a result of the purchase of 190 and 260 tonne excavators that replaced the previous 120 tonne excavators. This has been carried out in conjunction with expansion at the Carosue Dam Processing Plant from being able to handle a maximum of 3.2 million tonnes of ore a year to four million tonnes.

Whirling Dervish Gold Mine is Part of the Carosue Dam Operation
The Carosue Dam mining operation, that includes the Whirling Dervish open pit, was originally owned by the collapsed Sons of Gwalia Limited that went into administration in 2004. In 2005 it was purchased from the administrators by St Barbara Limited. St Barbara placed the whole operation on care and maintenance in June 2005 and that's how it remained until it was acquired by its present owners Saracen Mineral Holdings Limited in 2006 who reopened the operation in 2010.

Carosue Dam Processing Plant an Important Part of Whirling Dervish Operations
The all important Carosue Dam Processing Plant was constructed and commissioned by Pacmin Mining in 2000. Sons of Gwalia acquired it in 2001 and operated it for five years. In that time it produced more than 700,000 ounces of gold. Saracen purchased the Carosue Dam Processing Plant as part of the Carosue Dam mining acquisition in 2006.

The Whirling Dervish open cut mine is connected to the Western Power grid which means there is no need to use expensive diesel power generators. To achieve this a 90 kilometre power line had to be constructed. Gold mining operations began at the Whirling Dervish Mine in early 2010. Operations at the Whirling Dervish mine are closely related to gold prices remaining comparatively high.