Mineralogical and Geochemical Controls on the Formation of the Woods Point Dike Swarm, Victoria, Australia: Evidence from the Morning Star Dike and Implications for Sourcing of Au Within Orogenic Gold Systems

摘要

The Woods Point dike swarm of eastern Victoria, Australia, has produced over 133 tonnes (t) of Au. Here,as in a number of other orogenic Au provinces, a close spatial relationship is observed between orogenic Au mineralization and intrusive rocks; this study focuses on the well-endowed Morning Star dike, a gabbro to gabbro-diorite dike that has produced ~28 t of hydrothermal quartz-carbonate-pyrite vein-hosted Au and a further 24 t of placer gold derived from primary rocks in the area immediately around Morning Star. The fractionated magma that formed the dikes within the Woods Point dike swarm was sourced from a staging magma chamber at a depth of 16 to 23 km; here, mantle-derived magmas were driven to S saturation by assimilation of crustal material, leading to the formation of Cu-Ni-platinum group element (PGE)-Au–bearing sulfides,most of which segregated and settled toward the bottom of the staging chamber. Emplacement of the dike initiated with tapping of the staging chamber and release of the magmas within the chamber, forming the Woods Point dike swarm; flow differentiation and the formation of dike bulges enabled the segregation of sulfide-bearing mafic units and intermediate sulfide-barren units within these dikes. This is exemplified by primitive amphibole-rich, sulfide-bearing gabbroic sections and more evolved sulfide-barren gabbro-diorite portions of the Morning Star dike. We suggest that the source of Au within the Morning Star dike as well as that in other members of the Woods Point dike swarm was the Cu-PGE-Au sulfides left at depth within the magma conduit system, for example within the Thomson River Copper Mine dike. Mass balance calculations undertaken suggest that ~104 million tonnes (Mt) of magmatic sulfide may exist within the magma conduit system;these magmatic sulfides, if they are the equivalent of the sulfides preserved in the Morning Star dike,probably contain around 3% Ni and 10% Cu. During postmagmatic metamorphism, we infer that hydrothermal fluids flowed along dikes, interacting with magmatic sulfides and leaching some of the Au, which was subsequently deposited in quartz-carbonate veins at higher levels in the system.