Lady Bountiful Gold Mine, Mount Pleasant, Black Flag Goldfield, Kalgoorlie-Boulder Shire, Western Australia, Australiai

Regional Level Types
Lady Bountiful Gold Mine	Mine
Mount Pleasant	Mountain
Black Flag Goldfield	Ore Field
Kalgoorlie-Boulder Shire	Shire
Western Australia	State
Australia	Country

Lady Bountiful is in the northern section of the Mount Pleasant complex, with Lady Bountiful Extended immediately north, and Golden Kilometre and G.K. Shoot to the south. Historically the deposit was mined as shallow open pits, and underground workings, but in modern times its refers to sinuous shallow open pits following palaeochannels, much like the Lady Bountiful Extended mine. The workings are largely abandoned. 4.79 Mt at 1.75 g/t yielding 269 000 ounces of gold was mined.

Gold is found along a quartz veined, sinistral, brittle fault zone at the boundary between the Liberty Granitoid and Mount Pleasant Sill.

The open pits here are in a unit called the Liberty Granite, which is a massive, coarse equigranular biotite-hornblende adamellite, east of its contact with the differentiated Mount Pleasant sill. The Lady Bountiful ore lode runs east-west, dipping 75-85 degrees north as quartz veins 2-3 metres wide. North and south-east of this is vein stockwork 500 x 100 metres. All hosts gold mineralisation. Gold is found in primary and secondary ore.

In the Mount Pleasant sill the main lode is associated with pyrite in quartz veins. Within the Liberty Granite gold is found in carbonate-quartz veins with coarse pyrite, chalcopyrite, pyrrhotite, galena, sphalerite, and Au-Ag-Bi-Pb tellurides in sericite, K feldspar and albite altered adamellite.

Narrow less than 1 metre bleached wallrock has an alteration envelope to the fault zones consisting of albite-K mica-chlorite-calcite-rutile.

Secondary ore is found as channel deposits consisting of clasts of quartz and as residual gold at 30 metres deep in granite sand and saprolite. The gold has been derived from quartz veins where the gold has precipitated at a palaeo water table.

The deposit was mined initially from 1896 to 1909 as a small scale underground operation. Large scale open pits were developed from 1985 to 1988, and then an underground decline 1988 until around 1992.

The mine was about 5 kilometres north of the former Black Flag township. The leases were under offer to R.H. Henning, who then floated The Lady Bountiful Gold Mining Company in Coolgardie and the eastern seaboard of Australia in 1895 with 50 000 pounds capital. Alexander Forrest (Mayor of Perth), and James Shaw (Mayor of Coolgardie) were two of the directors. It was formed to acquire the leases 408, 409, and 500, 12 acres each. The vendor got 5000 pound cash and 20 000 fully paid shares.

At the time the leases contained five shallow shafts and much minor shallow alluvial diggings along the line of lode. The gold was described as fine but thickly impregnating the stone. The eastern lease contained shafts and costeans on a reef 3 feet wide, in a lode with quartz stringers and leaders. The central lease showed the reef outcropping boldly in parts, with several shafts down to a maximum depth of 30 feet. The reef here was 3 to 4 feet wide, and gold was reported thickly studding the rock. The west lease showed the reef as a low outcrop with shafts and costeans down to 20 feet.


A 10 head battery was erected in 1897. Carr (surname) was the original mine manager but left shortly after the battery was commissioned over a disagreement on the number of men the company would employ for development work. There was also a cyanide plant capable of 550 tonnes per month. In its first 18 months the mine had produced 2578 tonnes of ore for 3228 ounces of gold. At least 104 tonnes of this was telluride, producing 417 ounces at 17 dwt.

By 1900, operations were at a standstill, either poor spending by management and/or patchy gold values. The mine was possibly let on tribute, and one source states it was active until 1909, but no information was found after 1899.

Other Regions, Features and Areas containing this locality

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