Jack Hills field trip.htm

The Jack Hills are located in the Narryer Terrane of the Yilgarn Craton, Western Australia, and comprise an 80 km long northeast-trending belt of folded and metamorphosed supracrustal rocks. Siliciclastic rocks, interpreted as alluvial fan-delta deposits, are the major lithology. Minor mafic/ultramafic rocks and banded iron formation (BIF) are also found in the sequence. Detrital zircons with ages >4000 Ma have been found in these rocks and a 4,404 +/- 8 Myr zircon was found at Eranondoo Hill (Wilde et al., 2001), the oldest dated material on earth.

The Jack Hills field trip visited Eranondoo Hill and other localities in the Jack Hills and ended with a visit to Mt. Hale, the site of a proposed iron ore mine. The participants stayed at Mileura Station.

Fig. 1. Map of Archean cratons in Western Australia showing the location of Mt. Narryer and the Jack Hills. From Cavosie et al. (2004).

Fig. 2. Geologic map of the Jack Hills sedimentary belt. Eranondoo Hill is the site of the outrcrop that contained 4.4 Ga zircons. From Cavosie et al. (2004).


Jack Hills from Mt. Hale.	Simon Wilde near bottom of Eranondoo Hill.	Simon Wilde. Outcrop containing 4.4 billion year old zircons. Eranondoo Hill.	N. Eby. Eranondoo Hill.

Mileura homestead.	Plane landing at Mileura.	Guest quarters at Mileura.	Solar power array. Mileura.

Jack Hills area.	Jack Hills area.	Poonthune pool.	Bore on cattle station.

Termite mounds.	Jack Hills outcrop.	Gulah.	Kangaroo looking into the setting sun.

Emu.	Mt. Gould from Mt. Hale.	On Mt. Hale.	Banded iron formation (BIF). Mt. Hale.