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The Ellendale Diamond Field is a cluster of diamond producing lamproite intrusions located 125 km ESE of Derby within the WNW trending Lennard Shelf to the south of the Kimberley Block in the West Kimberly region of Australia. Ellendale's volcanic lamproite pipes intruded during the Miocene age betw
een 22 and 19 Ma, and 48 lamproites have been mapped within the northwest-trending 1500-square-kilometre (60 x 25 km) field. More than 100 lamproite intrusions are known over a wider 7500 km2 area surrounding the Ellendale swarm. Some 45 of the Ellendale intrusives are volcanic crater deposits, while 3 are classed as volcanic sills. The lamproites are either leucite or olivine rich, with 60% being diamondiferous. The first Ellendale pipe was identified in 1976 with diamonds mostly mined from 2 open pit hard-rock mines at the Ellendale 4 (E4) and Ellendale 9 (E9) lamproite pipes. Although of low grade (5 to 14 carats per hundred ton), these mines were characterised by a high proportion (75–90%) of gem-quality stones, including colourless, fancy yellow, green and brown diamonds. In 2023, following several years of exploration and resource definition, Australian owned private junior miner...
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