Geological setting and mineralization model for the Cleo gold deposit, Eastern Goldfields Province, Western Australia

The Cleo gold deposit, containing 4.25 Moz Au (37.1 Mt at 3.6 g/t), is the western part of a continuous orebody divided by a north-south tenement boundary. The eastern part is known as Sunrise, and together the Cleo and Sunrise deposits contain nearly 8 Moz Au in resources and past production. The focus of this study is the Cleo deposit, located 50 km south of Laverton in the Eastern Goldfields Province of the Yilgarn Craton of Western Australia, hosted in an Archean sequence dominated by volcaniclastic rocks. The Sunrise Shear Zone divides the sequence into hanging wall and footwall components. The gently north-west-dipping shear zone controls the orientation of shear-zone parallel ore zones, which characteristically involve pyrite replacement of magnetite in banded iron formation. Steeply-dipping multistage veins in the hanging wall and footwall define the Western Lodes, ore zones that are oriented parallel to adjacent rhyodacite–porphyry dikes. Western Lode veins are developed in all rock types, and commonly contain free gold, as well as pyrite, arsenopyrite, tennantite and chalcopyrite. In the footwall block, the margins of steeply east-dipping rhyodacite porphyry dikes form the main control on localization of the Western Lodes. In the hanging wall, the Western Lodes parallel a porphyry dike, both structures exploiting a favourable orientation in the stratigraphic sequence. Rhyodacite porphyry dikes exhibit strained margins in the Sunrise Shear Zone. Gold-bearing Western Lodes veins cut porphyry dikes and cut the Sunrise Shear Zone with minimal offset. The association of the ~2,675 Ma rhyodacite porphyry dikes with the Western Lodes ore zones is caused by the structurally favourable orientation of the dikes, and not to any direct genetic relationship between rhyodacite porphyry magma and ore fluids, as the latter post-dated the former.