Early-stage exploration of the State's South-East coastal region for possible economic heavy mineral sand placer deposits in ancient raised beaches has comprised an assessment of favourable geology, historical depositional conditions and geomorphology, the selection and modelling of geophysical anomalies thought to reflect shallow bedrock contours and possible magnetic sediments in fossil beach strandlines, and the conduct of two sampling programmes aimed at delineating the distribution of heavy minerals, the types of minerals present, their probable source rocks, and the structure of prospective dune and beach systems. Initial hand augering of the dune ranges and interdune swales was unsuccessful due to the presence often of shallow hard calcrete horizons. What samples were able to be recovered showed only minor heavy minerals. A second attempt at sampling the cover used exposures found in excavated road and drain cuttings. Again the results were poor in terms of heavy mineral presence. A Cainozoic detrital sedimentary heavy mineral fraction was identified that generally grades under 0.3% by mass, and which contains an overwhelming abundance of trash heavy mineral species such as biotite, hornblende, tourmaline and epidote, with only around 5 or 6% of said tiny fraction being economic minerals, principally zircon plus trace rutile. To try to find out why this situation pertained, 8 samples of outcropping granitic rocks were also rock chip sampled, and following grinding to separate the rock constituents, the minus 60 microns to plus 350 microns grainsize fraction of each sample was examined microscopically to obtain visual estimates of the primary heavy mineral composition and mineralogy.