Guidebook to the Pegmatites of Western Australia

摘要

Forrest Cureton once told me that while prospecting in Australia, it was possible to travel for days, and sometimes weeks, without seeing another human being. All of Australia itself is slightly smaller than the lower 48 states here in the U.S., and Western Australia constitutes just under a third of that continent and less than 10 percent of its population. Of the relatively sparse 2 million people in Western Australia, 1.5 million live in Perth, its capital city, also known as the most isolated city in the world with a population in excess of a million people! The stark reality: the population of this huge area, excluding Perth, amounts to approximately a half person per square mile! (The U.S. average is about 160 times that number!) This little bit of math attempts to shed some light on the daunting task of documenting the whereabouts, history, geology and mineralogy of the more than 200 pegmatites in the state. Some have not been visited in more than fifty (50) years, yet their mineralogical history is buried within published and unpublished geological reports, government records, university theses and the recollections and experiences of land owners and prospectors. Collecting this information, and presenting it in a useable form, is a Herculean job.