An area located on the southern edge of the Mesozoic to Tertiary Frome Embayment, 100 km north-west of Olary, which overlies Proterozoic igneous and metamorphic basement of the Curnamona Province, is being explored primarily for possible buried economic copper-gold and base metal mineralisation which may be associated with magnetic features seen in regional aeromagnetic data. Within the licence area lies the Goulds Dam secondary uranium deposit, containing ~2300 t of uranium oxide precipitated as a high grade 'roll-front' lens along a redox interface which is hosted by basal Eocene Eyre Formation fluvial sands of the Billeroo West Palaeochannel. The deposit, which was discovered in 1973 by the Minad-Teton consortium, is covered by a set of contiguous 100-acre Retention Leases, RL nos 83 to 90, which are now held by Southern Cross Resources NL (SXR), and which do not form a part of the subject EL 2286 Goulds Dam. During the first licence year, Rio Tinto did no field work. A literature search was performed to inform the company's intended work programme, to consist initially of ground geophysical surveys. During licence Year 2, Rio reviewed the data from recorded historic exploration activities that had included airborne magnetic and radiometric surveying, prospect-scale ground gravity and resistivity traversing, and extensive shallow rotary mud drilling to search for possible buried Tertiary sedimentary roll-front uranium mineralisation that might have formed within the Curnamona and Billeroo West palaeochannels. This earlier work had led to the delineation of the aforesaid significant uranium resource at Goulds Dam. [Also at this time, in the first half of 1998, exploratory drilling was undertaken by SXR within the Goulds Dam deposit Retention Leases to explore for northward extensions to the deposit. 40 open and cored rotary mud holes were drilled for a total penetration of 5567 m, at a cost in excess of $771,000.] Rio's modelling of lately released SAEI aeromagnetic data from the Parkers Dam magnetic feature located in the south of EL 2286 indicated that a magnetic source body might lie at 862 m depth beneath Phanerozoic and Adelaidean sedimentary cover. This target was deemed to be at too high a risk to drill, since such thick overburden would make any mineral deposit discovered on it economically prohibitive to mine. A similar aeromagnetic feature located a further 15 km to the south-southeast near Telechie Dam had been drilled by the Minad-Teton JV partners in the mid-1980s, and their hole TM9W-1 had encountered magnetic basement (migmatitic granite) beneath 778.65 m thickness of Phanerozoic sediments. On other past tenements in the surrounding Olary Ranges north-western marginal region, previous diamond drill testing of deeply-sourced coincident magnetic/gravity anomaly features looking for Olympic Dam style polymetallic deposits, for Broken Hill type Ag-Pb-Zn deposits and for MVT Pb-Zn mineralisation had revealed that generally the magnetite-bearing metamorphic basement rocks lie beneath several hundred metres thickness of Tertiary +/- Cambrian and Adelaidean sediment cover. It was recommended to Rio's management group that no further work be undertaken within EL 2286, and that the entire licence be surrendered or divested. During licence Year 3, on 17/1/2000, EL 2286 was purchased from Rio Tinto Exploration by Southern Cross Resources Australia Pty Ltd (SXR) to allow the latter to explore the ~40 km long section of the Billeroo Palaeochannel lying within the licence area. SXR had actually begun working on EL 2286 in 1997 using open file data, and had already spent in excess of $54,000 on background exploration activities that comprised data acquisition and digitising, database construction and management, ore reserve calculations, and geophysical data collection and interpretation. This work had been undertaken to allow the drilling data from 343 existing holes, and related maps and calculations of the sub-economic resources revealed to date, to be extrapolated to the boundaries of the Goulds Dam deposit Retention Leases. No field work was done by SXR during the year, while it planned upcoming activities. During licence Year 4, a stratigraphic re-interpretation, begun by SXR in January 2000, was completed in April 2000. Until then, the company's existing drillhole database contained locational details, downhole geophysical logs and grade - thickness information for more than 500 holes, but minimal stratigraphic data. The re-interpretation, based on picks made from geophysical logs, was undertaken in order to compile a consistent stratigraphy to use for modelling and resource estimation. No drillhole cores or cuttings were examined in this study, but historical lithological logs were used for checking purposes. With accompanying reports, they were also the principal source of detailed lithological information. The study resulted in creating a modified stratigraphic nomenclature for the sedimentary fill of the Billeroo Palaeovalley, with all holes re-interpreted. The depositional sequence appeared to be remarkably similar to that of the Yarramba / East Kalkaroo palaeovalleys located 70 km to the east, across a basement ridge. The Billeroo Palaeovalley is quite broad (~1.5 km) and flat in cross section. Thus, a majority of units are represented in most drillholes, with the exception of lowermost units that pinch out towards valley margins. This is not to say there is uniformity across the area. In a fluvial environment over an extended period, there will have been many braided, laterally migrating and meandering channels and associated bars. What is recognised is a stratigraphic framework within which there may be considerable local facies variation, as seen in variable numbers of clay lenses in the Basal Sands and local sub-unit Sands A, B, C, D1 and D2 of Ellis (1976). Uranium mineralisation throughout the system is essentially restricted to the lower units, i.e. the Basal Sands/Clay/Transition zone. Where the Basal Clay is thin, gamma ray log kicks/intercepts often straddle it and peak within it. However, ore grade-thickness zones in adjacent sands correlate with a greater thickness development of the Basal Clay. Both the palaeovalley and present day land surface display similar overall south to north gradients of about 1 m per km. This results in units having relatively constant downhole depths but northerly deepening RLs. The Goulds Dam tenement is an integral part of the Honeymoon Uranium Project ISL mining proposal, and thus was included in SXR's Environmental Impact Statement (EIS, May 2000) and stakeholder review Response Supplement (November 2000). During the latter part of 2000, SXR was obliged to concentrate all of its efforts towards preparing the Goulds Dam portion of the EIS Response Supplement. Then in 2001, all effort was devoted to completing additional EIS work at Honeymoon that was requested by the Commonwealth Government's Minister for Environment and Heritage. During licence Year 5, in November 2001, the Minister for Environment and Heritage approved the EIS, which led to the subsequent issue of a uranium export licence and the granting of a mining lease at Honeymoon in February 2002. SXR spent this year completing engineering and feasibility studies, with a view to commencing commercial uranium solution mining by in situ leaching at some point during 2003. During licence Year 6 (2002-2003), the first of renewed EL 2956, exploration activities comprised: - flying part of a multi-licence airborne electromagnetic survey, using the 25Hz Tempest™ system, over most of the licence area along 38 east-west flight lines 1 km apart, using a sensor 120 m mean terrain clearance height (304 line km of AEM and magnetic data recorded); - performing validation and data entry of original digital gamma ray log data from the 343 existing drillholes, including the capture of calibration data. The estimated and disequilibrium-adjusted cumulative logged U3O8 intersections per hole were recalculated, to arrive at revised aggregated grade-thickness values. Conductivity depth images were generated from the new AEM data by 1D inversion software, to produce a set of gridded CDI maps for 5-metre depth slice increments going from the surface to 275 m below ground. These maps showed that the survey had successfully mapped the concealed Tertiary palaeodrainage, and anomaly features within the dataset highlighted a number of new exploration targets. These targets occurred where it was thought that heterogeneity in the original stream flow paths could have allowed for an increased accumulation of organic material, thus providing the crucial chemical trapping mechanism to precipitate dissolved uranium from groundwater. SXR's re-evaluation of the historic gamma ray logs led it to condemn some of them (all Pacminex (PMX) and Eric Rudd (EAR) drillhole logs) as being unusable for quantitative uranium estimation, and so this lack of definite drillhole intercept information meant that the Goulds Dam prospect was essentially open in most directions. During licence Year 7, no field work was done, but important progress was made offsite when a Prompt Fission Neutron (PFN) well logging tool, having the capability to directly detect and measure the grade of uranium in situ, was built and commissioned by SXR. This technology had originally been developed during the 1970s specifically to accurately measure the uranium concentration in young roll-front deposits where extreme disequilibrium may exist. But its full implementation lay idle for many years when US uranium exploration halted after the Three Mile Island reactor disaster in 1979. Later, under licence, the technology was revived, and it was successfully used by Heathgate Resources at the Beverley uranium mine in South Australia. In 2000, the patents for manufacturing the tool expired, thus permitting SXR to build its own version. This new tool is housed in a purpose-built logging truck, and was calibrated in test pits constructed by SXR at the Honeymoon mine site. During licence Year 8, exploration activities comprised: - acquisition in June-July 2004 of a detailed, 1088 station gravity survey across the whole tenement area on a regular 1 km x 1 km grid, infilled in places to 500 m x 500 m, to provide data about basement topography that could be used to refine the location of EM-interpreted palaeochannels; - the conduct of an exploratory rotary mud drilling campaign over the period September-November 2004, when 118 open vertical holes for 15,232 m were completed within the top of basement interval and were geophysically logged, including with the new PFN tool; and - the preparation of a new mineral resource estimate for the Goulds Dam prospect based in part on the results of this latest drilling, and using a higher cut-off grade because of the PFN logging technology input. An Indicated Resource of 1.7 Mt @ 0.12% U3O8, for 2000 t of contained U3O8, was calculated for SXR by consultant Ken Bampton. The envelope of economic mineralisation occurs in unconsolidated and water saturated sands which are sealed below impervious clay horizons, and is over 1400 m long, 240 m wide and has an average cumulative thickness of 2.9 m. During licence Year 9, SXR / Uranium One undertook exploratory drilling of 31 open rotary mud holes for 4080 m within the Billeroo Palaeovalley in areas distal to Goulds Dam, to test targets outlined by its new gravity and airborne EM surveys' data. The drillholes lay on four separate east-west traverses aligned at right angles to the interpreted position of the palaeovalley in the places tested. Each hole was drilled to basement and was geophysically logged with a gamma ray tool for grade determination. Additionally, two holes were logged with the PFN tool, because by comparing the PFN grade estimate with the gamma ray grade estimate, an indication of uranium isotopic disequilibration could be ascertained. Based on drilling results obtained along the three drill traverses located immediately to the north of Goulds Dam, for mineralisation encountered there within the basal Eyre Formation, an inferred uranium resource of 3600 t U3O8 was calculated that is unevenly spread over an area of ~20 square km based on thin, centimetre scale intercepts from historic and current drillholes. During licence Year 10, Uranium One undertook exploratory drilling of 97 open rotary mud holes for 12,872 m within the Billeroo Palaeovalley to scope the above confirmed significant mineralisation occurrence at Billeroo. The new drilling included a mixture of widely spaced fences and concentrated clusters of drillholes, with all holes located within a 6 km x 4 km area of the airborne EM interpreted palaeovalley main central and peripheral channelways. Fifteen cross sections were constructed to display the drilling and geophysical logging results from the latest and prior drilling. Attempted twinning of historic holes with reported strong uranium intercepts, to try to validate such, was only of limited value because only five replicate holes could be completed. This larger 2005-2006 drilling programme was successful in that additional uranium mineralisation was intersected, although its tenor did not match that seen at the Goulds Dam or Honeymoon deposits. The foremost finding made, however, was to gain a new understanding of the predominantly discontinuous nature of the uranium mineralisation and of the palaeochannel basal sands. The thickest mineralised intersection was made over 1.9 m in hole GLD186; the highest measured grade was 0.33% pU3O8 in hole GLD229. A lack of lateral continuity of mineralisation appears to be due to numerous interbedded clay lenses, as borne out by responses from the comprehensive modern geophysical log suite. Historic stratigraphic interpretation did not employ this level of detail and therefore understated the position. Furthermore, much of the mineralisation at Billeroo seems to be associated with sand - clay boundaries / bed contacts and with the contact between the Eyre Formation Basal Sand (host sediments) and basement saprolite. The possible presence of multiple oxidation fronts in the basal sands could not be ruled out either, so the task of mapping redox pathways presented a difficult proposition at this stage. Following the renewal of tenure at Goulds Dam as EL 3905, no work was done during reporting Year 11. During licence Year 12, Uranium One's attention returned to exploring the full potential of the Goulds Dam deposit. 149 open rotary mud holes for 19,856 m were drilled to infill the existing 80 m x 80 m resource definition grid at 40 m hole spacing intervals, in order to improve the company’s understanding of the deposit geology and provide data that would lead to an updated Indicated Resource estimate. Some additional uranium mineralisation was encountered, so work began on mapping grade patterns and oxidation/reduction boundaries as roll-fronts in order to trace high grade sections of the deposit. It was evident, however, that further work would be necessary at Goulds Dam to accurately delineate some sections internally and more particularly the edges of the deposit.