Bustamite with Galena
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Bustamite with Galena from Broken Hill, N.S.W., Australia, measuring 65 × 54 × 42 mm and weighing 268 grams. A solid, weighty piece pairing the Rhodonite-group silicate with the deposit's dominant ore mineral.
Bustamite, calcium manganese silicate, CaMn(SiO3)2, formed within the same metamorphosed, manganese-enriched host rock that produced Broken Hill's Rhodonite and Spessartine, while the Galena beside it, lead sulfide, belongs to the massive sulfide orebody the whole district was mined for. The contrast between the two, pale pinkish silicate against heavy, metallic-grey Galena, is a physical record of two quite different episodes in the deposit's long and complicated geological history coming together in a single piece of rock.
Broken Hill has been worked continuously since 1883 and remains one of the most thoroughly documented orebodies in the world, precisely because combinations like this keep turning up new things to say about how the lode actually formed. This piece is from the David Vince Collection.