Qualla: Merlin diamond mine

Merlin diamond mine: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 2003, a stone came out of the red Gulf country soil that weighed 104.73 carats - the largest diamond ever found in Australia, later valued at over half a million US dollars. It was pulled from the Merlin diamond mine, a scatter of pipes in the flat, hot scrub about 80 kilometres south of Borroloola, in the Northern Territory's remote Roper Gulf region. For a brief moment, this overlooked corner of the outback held a genuine claim to gemstone royalty. Then, just as quickly, the mine fell silent - the first chapter in a stop-start saga that is still being written.

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Merlin diamond mine: An Unusually Generous Stone

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What made Merlin special was not how many diamonds it produced but how good they were. At most diamond mines worldwide, only about one stone in five is gem quality; at Argyle, Australia's largest mine, the figure was a mere 5 percent. At Merlin, an extraordinary 65 percent of pro...

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Merlin diamond mine: Three Years, Half a Million Carats

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Ashton Mining first developed and ran the operation, and from 1999 to mid-2003 Merlin produced roughly 500,000 carats - about 100 kilograms - of high-quality diamonds. Three years was all it lasted in that first incarnation. The economics of a small, remote, low-grade mine are un...

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Merlin diamond mine: The Long Wait for a Second Act

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Merlin's afterlife has been a story of hope deferred. Rio Tinto sold the mine and its rights to Striker Resources, which studied the possibility of reopening it. Striker became North Australian Diamonds and briefly worked the site again in 2006, but the revival did not hold. For ...

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Merlin diamond mine: Pipes From the Deep Earth

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Merlin's diamonds did not form anywhere near the surface. They came up from the deep mantle, carried by violent ancient eruptions of a rock called kimberlite - the same diamond-bearing rock that built the great mines of southern Africa and Siberia. At Merlin, geologists mapped a ...

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Merlin diamond mine: A Diamond in the Outback

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

There is something fitting about Australia's biggest diamond emerging from a place this empty. The Gulf country is vast, hot, and thinly peopled - a landscape of spinifex and ironstone where the wet season floods and the dry season bakes. To find here, in this remoteness, stones ...

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