Inesite with Sturtite

Inesite with Sturtite from the Zinc Corp. Mine, Broken Hill, N.S.W., Australia, measuring 65 × 46 × 35 mm and weighing 150 grams. A specimen pairing two of the rarer manganese minerals that have made Broken Hill a name among collectors who look well beyond Galena and Sphalerite.

Inesite is a hydrous calcium-manganese silicate that typically forms as fine, radiating sprays of pink to rose-red fibrous crystals, a striking contrast to most of the deposit's darker manganese species. Sturtite is a much less commonly seen manganese silicate, historically described from Broken Hill's own ore body and still something of a locality curiosity rather than a widely distributed mineral. Both owe their presence here to the same manganese-enriched conditions, within the metamorphosed lode rock, that also produced the deposit's Rhodonite, Bustamite and Spessartine.

Specimens showing Inesite well are not common even by Broken Hill standards, and a piece naming Sturtite alongside it points to a specimen that has been looked at carefully rather than labelled in passing. This piece carries a double provenance, the David Vince Collection and the Ruth Coulsell Collection.