The Pine Creek Inlier produced 12 440 kg of gold in the period
from the first gold discovery in the 1860s to the early-1900s.
During the 1930s renewed large-scale prospecting took place and
gave a foothold for today's gold mining operations. The rise of
the gold price and improved mining methods in the 1970s and
1980s made possible low cost, bulk low grade mining operations.
Various gold deposits including vein, network and stratiform
types occur in the Pine Creek Inlier (Nicholson and Eupene,
1990). The Tom's Gully deposit is located 100 km south-east of
Darwin in the Northern Territory. It is hosted in the early
Proterozoic Wildman Siltstone and lies north-east of 1800 my old
Mt Bundey Pluton (Figure 1). Around the Mt Bundey Pluton,
there are several prospective base and precious metal deposits
such as Quest 29. The Tom's Gully gold deposit was discovered
in 1986 and yielded a total of 3070 kg of gold from ore averaging
9.35 g/t gold between 1987 and 1990 when the mining operation
was terminated.