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Preliminary results
The first Assay of Rocks
A total of 150 rocks have been examined for mineralogy and most were assayed for metals by ALS Orange. The plan is to analyse about 500 rocks and 300 soils in this year - that will complete the first pass of the areas where access has been agreed with landowners. After the first pass, the next step will be to go back and focus our prospecting on the areas where anomalous results have been obtained.
Methodology
Wherever possible, rocks were collected along linear transects in order to analyse changes in the mineralogy and metal content. Outcrops and cuttings were sampled for rocks and soil.
Metal Assays
ALS at Orange in NSW assayed the rock samples by method ME-ICP61 for 35 metals as well as by method Au-AA24 for gold.
Example of one rock type
The photograph below shows a cross-section of a rock which is representative of rocks that occurred over at least 900 metres. These rocks have elevated levels (anomalous grades) of various key metals - silver, arsenic, copper, iron, barium, lanthanum, manganese, lead, vanadium, tungsten and strontium. The rock was found to be weakly magnetic, and with manganese oxide replacement. The rock is a highly-altered, brecciated sedimentary rock with abundant quartz veinlets.
Types of Rocks
The Exploration Licences cover a wide area along the Great Serpentine Belt, so the rock types and mineralogy reflect the enormous geological activity that has occurred here in the last 500 million years, This region has a fantastic, unique history and an equally amazing range of rocks.
Ultramafic rocks
The most obvious ultramafics are the serpentinites - they have very high levels of magnesium, nickel, chromium, and cobalt. However, there are also meta-basalt rocks with very high levels of titanium, vanadium and scandium (possibly commercial grades).
Porphyry
Course-grained porphyry types of rocks were found which ran for lengths of several kilometres. Within these lengths there were patches of rocks with anomalous levels of copper, arsenic, gold, iron, strontium, vanadium, chromium and zinc. While the grades of metals were not too high (5 to 100 times higher than background), they should be followed up with much closer spacing between samples.
VMS or Black Smokers
Some areas had rocks with metals that indicated they could have been transported from volcanic massive sulfides (VMS) or black smokers. The metals in these rocks could have originated as plumes of metals that came from undersea vents which released minerals onto the floor of the ancient ocean. If so, there could be very high grade metal deposits undercover and that concept is supported by the large magnetic anomalies that geophysical surveys have shown underlie these areas.
