The Geology of the Broken Hill Lead-Zinc-Silver Deposit, New South Wales, Australia.: A. E. WEBSTER. Pp. 278. CODES ARC Centre of Excellence in Ore Deposits Monograph 1. 2006. ISBN 1-86295-353-8. Price: $100.75.

Abstract

This monograph on the supergiant Broken Hill deposit by Webster “is the first in a series on world-class ore deposits” to be published by CODES ARC Centre of Excellence in Ore Deposits, University of Tasmania. It is based mainly on Ph.D. research completed while Webster was an exploration and mine geologist working for Pasminco, when that company owned and operated the deposit. Most of the text was written prior to 2004 and it was published in 2006. The Broken Hill orebodies were first mined in 1883 and mining continues today. This Pb-Zn-Ag deposit is the largest on Earth and one of the most studied (if not the most studied) ore deposits, with hundreds of publications appearing in the literature. Despite all of this work, there are still several fundamental questions about the deposit and its host rocks which remain controversial and are the subject of debate, including the origin of the deposit, the precursors of several of the host rocks, the effects of metamorphism on the ore deposit, and the stratigraphic relationship of the massive sulfides to fold events. The controversy surrounding many aspects of the deposit is, in large part, a result of its enormous size, with many researchers basing conclusions on limited exposures of the ore and surrounding rocks, influenced by the camouflaging effects of granulite facies metamorphism and at least three fold events on the ore. In the preface of the monograph, the …