As part of a regional exploration project targeting possible economic buried secondary, roll-front style uranium deposits within Tertiary sediments of the Wynbring Palaeochannel and its several tributaries, an area located approximately 75 km...
As part of a regional exploration project targeting possible economic buried secondary, roll-front style uranium deposits within Tertiary sediments of the Wynbring Palaeochannel and its several tributaries, an area located approximately 75 km west-northwest of Tarcoola was investigated using reconnaissance ground gravity surveys and aircore drilling. 396 gravity stations were read along 11 variously configured drainage profile traverses during October-November 2005, and interpreted prospective buried palaeochannel sections forming part of previously unexplored palaeodrainage tributary features were then tested during the same two months by performing aircore drilling (57 holes for a total penetration of 3006 m) and downhole gamma ray logging plus assaying of selected sediment samples. The drilling, to an average depth of 53 m, with the deepest hole reaching 111 m depth, has demonstrated the presence of Tertiary fluvial sediments which may in places contain minor occurrences of sedimentary uranium. However, only a few of the drillholes revealed anomalous radioactivity, peaking at 191 counts per second as logged by the gamma ray tool run inside aircore drill rods. The radiation peaks, detected in drillholes put down near known uranium anomalism encountered in previous drillhole TW108, are thought to correspond to redox conditions associated with the basal part of multicoloured sand units intersected at less than 20 m depth beneath the surface, that overlie lignite or grey pyritic clay horizons. 258 selected drill cuttings samples obtained from bit face sampling of the aircore holes were assayed for uranium and thorium by XRF methods. The results indicated only low concentrations of these elements, to maxima of 60 ppm U and 54 ppm Th. Because of the lack of sufficient encouragement for proceeding to follow-up investigations, no field work was conducted on the licence over the period from December 2005 until March 2008. Competing exploration priorities generated from the company's more advanced Lake Maitland uranium prospect in Western Australia were partly the reason for this lack of activity. However, when it became known that Fission Energy had discovered a significant occurrence of sediment-hosted uranium mineralisation within the higher reaches of the Wynbring Palaeochannel, at the Pundinya prospect on EL 3306, early in 2007, Mega Hindmarsh rekindled its interest in the area. It was decided that because the uranium targeting methods hitherto used in the region (AEM, gravity, drilling) were indirect and relatively costly, a regional geochemical technique was needed that would be a more direct and cheap pathfinder to this commodity. Because of its likely fairly shallow occurrence, a rapid surface sampling technique to detect the uranium across all of a prospective region would suit best. To test this idea, Mega Hindmarsh commissioned a trial of a new biogeochemical method, kangaroo scat sampling, across its Eucla Project licences, to see whether the results generated by analysing the products of localised grazing by such animals could define buried occurrences of elevated uranium content, as well as geochemical dispersions from associated minerals. On the subject licence a total of 7 scat samples were collected and assayed in March and April 2008. Across all seven project licences surveyed, a number of targets were identified for follow-up exploration, based on the assay values, regolith-landform context and ages of the scats sampled. The main targets are geographically clustered, confirming the authenticity of the anomalies. A detailed assessment of the quality of the assay results was made using various controls, which suggested that the sample preparation and analysis methods used had given precise and accurate values where above 40 ppb U. A lack of analytical precision evident for results returned below this level emphasised that careful homogenisation of duplicate samples is necessary to improve the reliability of future such scat surveys. It was recommended that complementary vegetation geochemical sampling should also be undertaken to assist in locating shallow uranium occurrences in the region.
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