region The Bronzewing deposit was discovered by
Mark Creasy, and its sale earned him an entry into the
Guinness Book of Records as the prospector receiving the richest payout,
A$115 million from
Great Central Mines. The Bronzewing Gold Mine opened in 1991, then under the ownership of Great Central Mines, a company led by the ordained Rabbi
Joseph Gutnick. On 20 May 1999, Bronzewing produced its 1,000,000th ounce of gold. GMC was taken over by
Normandy Mining, with Bronzewing, the
Jundee Gold Mine and the
Wiluna Gold Mine, in 1999 but continued trading until mid-2000. GMC acquired the
Mt McClure Gold Mine, near Bronzewing, in September 1999 and integrating it into the latter. Normandy, in turn, was taken over by the
Newmont Mining Corporation in February 2002. From 1991 to 2004, the mine produced over 3.0 million ounces of gold from eleven open cut and three underground operations, with the last of the later having closed shortly before the sale of the mine to View Resources. The company initially placed the mine in care and maintenance and hoped to resume production in mid-2005. In October 2006, View announced it would redevelop the plant at Bronzewing and target a mid-2007 start date for production. The company resumed mining at Bronzewing from underground and open pit sources in April 2007. Mining was carried out in two open pit locations, the Success and the Central Pit, and two underground declines, Discovery and Calista. On 6 February 2008, the directors of the company announced a production short fall, with only 6,500 ounces produced instead of the expected 10,000 for January. This was blamed on a grade short fall. As an immediate action, View suspended underground mining. View Resources Limited went into administration on 8 February 2008, ending all mining activities on site. Navigator Resources announced on 2 April 2009 that it intended to purchase the Bronzewing mine for A$9.55 million plus a $6.45 million environmental bond. Navigator planned to resume mining from open pit sources in January 2010. The acquisition of Bronzewing was completed on 1 October 2009 and Navigator set the date for first gold production to April 2010. Shortly after, on 7 October, the administrators of View Resources Gold,
Ferrier Hodgson, announced that the company will eventually go into
liquidation. Navigator carried out its first gold pour at the mine on 21 April 2010. The mine produced 11,409 ounces of gold for the financial year 2009-10, all from the final quarter of the year, with a production forecast of 101,000 ounces for the following year. Ore shortfalls caused the mine to underperform in its first full year of operation, with only 75,000 ounces processed. Navigator was forced to cut back its production projection for 2011-12 to 75,000 to 80,000 ounces and to raise additional cash through a A$32.6 million renouncable rights issue. On 7 January 2014 it was announced that the mine had been sold to Metaliko Resources for A$4.82 million. The sale was scheduled to be completed by 28 February 2014. Metaliko Resources was taken over by Echo Resources in January 2017. Echo Resources announced in early 2019 that it would refurbish the Bronzewing processing plant with the aim of extracting 379,000 ounces of gold from the mine over a four year period. In December 2019,
Northern Star Resources completed the takeover of previous owner Echo Resources and added the Bronzewing mine and combined it with its
Jundee Gold Mine as part of the new Yandal Production Centre. ==Fatalities==