Talk:Maureen Muggeridge

Maureen Muggeridge and the Argyle diamond mine find

Maureen Muggeridge worked with Tanganyika Holdings, followed by the Ashton Joint Venture before her marriage to John Towie. She was part of a large team of geologists involved in finding the Argyle deposit. She helped develop some new mineralogy methods for Australian diamond exploration, along with Chris Smith, Anne Hall, Rudy Klarich and others in Perth, Western Australia which were used alongside the traditional exploration methods based on South African mineralogy.1. Prior to Argyle being found, CRA Exploration developed a major alluvial sampling program across Western Australia's cratons and mobile belts and in other Australian states, e.g. New England NSW.2. Maureen worked alongside many AJV and CRAE staff and contract geologists in diamond exploration in the field in the Kimberleys and in the AJV Subiaco laboratory and later in the CRAE Belmont office and laboratory. At one point in the early 1980's, CRAE had nine female staff geologists and mineralogists in WA, of which seven were working in the diamond teams, which was very unusual in the industry at the time. Maureen and a field assistant took the first gravel samples from the lamproite which became the Argyle mine as part of a routine sampling program. She did not know the diamondiferous results until the sample was processed in the laboratory. Immediately thirty CRAE and AJV geologists were seconded for six weeks to the Kimberleys for helicopter claim pegging, road building, camp development, trenching and diamond sampling. After her marriage and the birth of her child, Maureen returned to work in mineralogy and report writing from the CRAE Belmont office. Then she began her PhD studies on diamond exploration, and then formed her own diamond exploration company. She continued to believe there were more diamonds to be found in Western Australia. 3. 1. Maureen Muggeridge was my colleague and mentor in diamond exploration. I was the first CRA Exploration (not Ashton Joint Venture) diamond mineralogist and exploration geologist in Western Australia, and was trained by the Tanganyika and AJV mineralogists in their Subiaco laboratory and in the gravel sampling field techniques produced by Maureen. I did research in diamond mineralogy for CRAE at UWA and CSIRO, the results of which Maureen used as part of her PhD in diamond exploration with UWA. I was seconded in the second batch of thirty geologists on site to Argyle, and at different times, I claim -pegged along the WA-NT border by helicopter, for example, as well as supervised the exploratory diamond sorting, checked the sorters' work, and weighed and catalogued the diamonds that we found. Personal experience. Rev Wendy Snook nee Wendy Parker, CRA Exploration mineralogist and exploration geologist 1979-1982. 2. BHP and CRA join NSW diamond rush by Mark Davis, Australian Financial Review, Dec 5, 1994. www.afr.com Accessed 17 Oct 2022. 3. Maureen Muggeridge was an amazing character, renowned for her physical strength and courage, her intelligence and humour, her World War One flying helmet in cold weather, whom I respected greatly, and she is missed still by her friends. 61.69.161.59 (talk) 07:24, 17 October 2022 (UTC)