Qualla: Ellendale Diamond Field

Ellendale Diamond Field: Introduction

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Until November 1976, every geologist in the world agreed on one thing: diamonds came from kimberlite pipes. Then the Ashton Joint Venture found them in lamproite at Ellendale, 125 kilometres southeast of Derby in the West Kimberley, and the textbooks had to be rewritten. The discovery triggered a worldwide rush to re-examine lamproite formations everywhere, and within three years it led a geologist named Maureen Muggeridge to a creek 420 kilometres to the northeast where she found the first diamonds of what would become the Argyle mine -- famous for its pink stones. Ellendale, the field that started it all, took a very different path.

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Ellendale Diamond Field: Volcanoes Under the Kimberley

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Ellendale Diamond Field is a cluster of 48 lamproite pipes stretching across 1,500 square kilometres of the Lennard Shelf, south of the Kimberley Block. These volcanic intrusions punched through the earth during the Miocene, between 22 and 19 million years ago. Over a wider 7...

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Ellendale Diamond Field: Tiffany Yellow

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ellendale became the largest single source of fancy yellow diamonds in the world. Where most diamond mines produce less than one percent fancy yellows, Ellendale's output ran at approximately 12 percent. In 2009, Tiffany & Co. signed an exclusive life-of-mine offtake contract thr...

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Ellendale Diamond Field: The Collapse

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

A routine blast at the E9 pit in June 2013 accidentally undermined the main access ramp -- the only way in and out of what was then the sole operational pit. For five months, the Kimberley Diamond Company survived on limited ore stockpiles while the ramp was repaired. By the time...

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Ellendale Diamond Field: The Lost Alluvials

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Here is where Ellendale becomes genuinely strange. Geologists have calculated how many diamonds should have eroded out of the lamproite pipes over millions of years and washed into alluvial deposits downstream. The number of carats actually found in alluvial beds falls far short ...

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Ellendale Diamond Field: Purple Light and Green Stones

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ellendale continues to produce surprises. Near the E12 pipe, alluvial beds yield diamonds with distinctly different morphology and colours from those found in the main Terrace 5 channel just 300 metres away -- including green diamonds. The E12 pipe itself tests as nearly barren, ...

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