Leslie Massey
Talc is a hydrous magnesium silicate mineral that is highly valued for its softness, water repellency, and inertness. It is used in a wide range of applications, including paint, paper, plastics, and ceramics. While China is the world's largest producer of talc, Australia also has significant deposits and production of this mineral. In Australia, talc can be found in various locations, including South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, and Victoria. The Mount Seabrook talc mine in Western Australia and the Lyndoch talc deposits in South Australia are notable examples of talc sources in the country.
| Characteristics | Values |
|---|---|
| Locations of talc mines in Australia | Mount Bischoff Mine, Waratah, Tasmania |
| Mount Fitton Talc Mine, South Australia | |
| Red Hill, Victoria | |
| Three Springs Talc Mine, Western Australia | |
| Lyndoch deposits, South Australia | |
| Tweedie Gully lodes, South Australia | |
| Mount Seabrook talc mine, Western Australia | |
| Adelaidean Balcanoona Formation |
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What You'll Learn
Mount Fitton Talc Mine, South Australia
Mount Fitton Talc Mine is located in the Arkaroola Region, in the North Flinders Ranges of South Australia. The mine is accessible via Talc Mine Road in Moolawatana, a pastoral unincorporated area in the Far North Region of the state. The region has a hot desert climate.
Mount Fitton is about 130 km northeast of Leigh Creek and boasts the largest and highest-grade talc deposits in South Australia. The deposit at Mount Fitton is unique in its purity and fineness, making it suitable for use in cosmetics. Talc has been mined continuously at Mount Fitton since 1945.
The road through the Mount Fitton Talc Mine leads to the Mount Fitton homestead, which was once a prosperous sheep property in the 1920s. The Adnyamathanha people shared their knowledge of the talc deposits near Mount Fitton with Europeans, and their stories describe the formation of the talc and express regret that sharing this knowledge led to mining in the area.
Cornelius Alferink, known as "Talc Alf," played a significant role in the history of the mine. He was responsible for loading Mt Fitton talc onto trucks for transport to Adelaide for milling. He also selected special pieces of talc, carved them into shapes, and sold them from his outdoor gallery near Lyndhurst.
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Mount Bischoff Mine, Tasmania
Mount Bischoff Mine is located in Waratah, in the Waratah district of the Waratah-Wynyard municipality in north-western Tasmania, Australia. The mountain, a former tin mine, was discovered by farmer and part-time prospector James "Philosopher" Smith in 1871 and was named in the early nineteenth century after the chairman of the Van Diemen's Land Company, James Bischoff. Mount Bischoff mine was one of the world's richest tin mines for many years and remained in continuous production for 70 years until it closed in 1947.
Following its closure in 1947, mining ventures at Mount Bischoff were mostly small and spasmodic. Open-cut mining operations restarted in 2008, with a large open pit swallowing most of the old workings, except for the western, Slaughteryard Face, and Summit workings. At the time, ore reserves were estimated to be 845,000 tonnes, grading at 1.20 percent tin. In 2009-2010, 198,000 tonnes of ore were mined, yielding 6,267 tonnes of tin in concentrate.
The Mount Bischoff mine was operated by the Mount Bischoff Tin Mining Company, which used a sluice supplied with water from the top of the waterfall in Waratah. In June 1883, the mine installed one of the first hydro-electric generators in Australia, powering the offices, workshop, and manager's house. By 1893, all the easily accessible ore had been extracted, and sluicing was discontinued. Mining continued as an open-cut on the mountain face and underground.
In 2008, Metals X Limited, a Perth-based tin mining company, decided to mine the remaining ore at Mount Bischoff through its subsidiary, Bluestone Mines Tasmania Pty Ltd. Bluestone Mines Tasmania Pty Ltd continued its exploration program even when the mine was on care and maintenance in 2015.
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Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia
The Yilgarn Craton in Western Australia is one of the distinct physiographic provinces of the West Australian Shield. It is partially covered by onlapping sedimentary basins of the Palaezoic and Phanerozoic ages in the east and north-east, including the Canning Basin. The Darling Scarp and the Darling Fault on the Craton's western edge separate it from the Perth Basin to the west. The Yilgarn Craton also has a Tertiary and younger sedimentary veneer of palaeochannel deposits derived from prolonged erosion, sedimentation, and redeposition of older cover sequences and regolith, as well as the Archaean basement itself.
The craton is primarily composed of approximately 2.8 billion-year-old granite-gneiss metamorphic terrain (the Southwestern Province and Western Gneiss Belt) and three granite-greenstone terrains (the North-East Goldfields, the Southern Cross, and the Murchison Provinces). Some greenstone belts and granites are as old as 3.1-2.9 billion years, and some are younger, at around 2.75-2.65 billion years. The Western Gneiss terrane is exposed along the western half of the northern margin of the Yilgarn Craton as the Narryer Gneiss terrane, a composite of heavily polydeformed feldspathic metagranite and metasedimentary amphibolite-grade gneisses and migmatites.
The Albany-Fraser Orogen, which is intimately interconnected with the other Proterozoic basins and mobile belts of Australia, displays both subduction-related and prolonged strike-slip tectonic structures. The Yilgarn Craton contains world-class deposits, including Mount Charlotte, Norseman, Sunrise Dam, and Sons of Gwalia. The Mount Seabrook talc mine in Western Australia is also a notable economic occurrence of talc.
The Yilgarn Craton was once blanketed by thick sheets of ice during the Permo-Carboniferous glaciation from about 320–280 million years ago. These glaciers ground down and flattened out large areas of the craton. Since that time, the Yilgarn Craton has never been completely covered by the sea and has seen no glaciers or mountain-building activity.
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Lyndoch talc deposits, South Australia
Talc is a common metamorphic mineral found in metamorphic belts that contain ultramafic rocks, such as soapstone (a high-talc rock). It is also found in whiteschist and blueschist metamorphic terranes. Talc is one of the most versatile and useful industrial minerals. It is a hydrous magnesium silicate, the massive variety of which is known as steatite or soapstone.
Lyndoch is a town in the Barossa Valley of South Australia, located on the Barossa Valley Highway between Gawler and Tanunda, 58 km northeast of Adelaide. Lyndoch is one of the oldest towns in South Australia. The town is now primarily a service centre for the surrounding grape and wine industry, and a dormitory town with a significant number of local residents commuting to Adelaide for employment.
Lyndoch is also home to small lodes of coarse, flaky talc, which have been worked for second and third grades 5 km east-southeast of the town. The deposits are hosted by quartzite and bi-mica schist of the Woolshed Flat Shale and are associated with albite. The lodes occur in strongly folded or faulted zones. The Smith Talc Asbestos Mine in Lyndoch was operational in 1937, 1938, and the early 1970s, producing 40 tons of talc in 1938 and 92 tons in 1972.
Talc deposits in South Australia are also found in Mount Fitton in the northern Flinders Ranges, the Mount Lofty Ranges, and Eyre Peninsula. The Mount Fitton deposits are of a similar type to the Three Springs deposit in Western Australia, the world's second-largest deposit.
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Mount Seabrook talc mine, Western Australia
Mount Seabrook Talc Mine is located in Western Australia, 175 kilometres north-west of Meekatharra and 1.5 kilometres north-north-east of Mount Seabrook. It is the second-largest talc mine in Western Australia, after the Three Springs mine. The deposit was discovered in 1965 by prospector M. Lalor and was then acquired by the Lalor Prospectors Syndicate. It was later purchased by Westside Mines NL, who opened an exploration pit across 1969-1972, followed by production from 1973-1984, achieving 230,842 tonnes of talc.
The Mount Seabrook talc deposit is hosted by the Paleoproterozoic Padbury Group, with the talc formed by metamorphism of dolomite, part of a schist-dolomite-chert-quartzite-talc sequence, intruded by granite. The country rock is metamorphosed sandstone, dolomite, quartzite, pebble conglomerate, and quartz-muscovite schist, with biotite and chlorite-bearing lenses of white to light green contorted talc schist. The talc is fine-grained, ranging from white to pale green, and is locally translucent, with minor rounded and anhedral quartz, and veinlets of fine common opal.
The mine changed hands several times, with purchases by Thames Mining NL in 1986-1987, then Gwalia Minerals NL. The mine is currently operated by Imi Fabi (Aust) Pty Ltd, with nearly all the talc exported from Geraldton to Europe for high-grade applications.
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Frequently asked questions
Talc deposits have been mined in Australia since 1901. Some of the locations where talc is found in Australia include:
- Mount Fitton Talc Mine, South Australia
- Red Hill, Victoria
- Three Springs Talc Mine, Western Australia
- Mount Bischoff Mine, Tasmania
Some of the talc deposits in Australia include Lyndoch, Chapman, Forreston, and Steatite Hill.
Talc is used in a wide variety of products. Some of its applications include:
- Paint
- Paper
- Roofing materials
- Plastic
- Rubber
- Insecticides
- Cosmetics
