EL 5846 covers an area of 462 km2 and is located approximately 70km east of Adelaide. It is located within the Murray Basin, with a basement of poorly outcropping to deeply covered Neoproterozoic and Cambrian Kanmantoo Group sediments and...
EL 5846 covers an area of 462 km2 and is located approximately 70km east of Adelaide. It is located within the Murray Basin, with a basement of poorly outcropping to deeply covered Neoproterozoic and Cambrian Kanmantoo Group sediments and Cambro-Ordovician syn- to post-tectonic felsic to mafic volcanics and granitic, mafic and ultramafic intrusions. Gaining access to the Wild Horse magnetic anomaly which lies beneath the Australian Defence Force’s Murray Bridge Training Area (MUTA) is proving difficult. As the land on which MUTA is located is vested in the Commonwealth then permission to access the land must be authorised by the Minister for Finance (Finance Minister). The anomaly exhibits the classic Western Pacific porphyry deposit style of ring zonation. During the reporting period Terramin’s primary exploration objectives for the Wild Horse Project were to compile the historic data on the tenement, examine historic drillholes stored in the South Australian Core Library and conduct field reconnaissance and minor surface geochemical sampling. Surface sampling was limited to an orientation survey, where a total of 107 surface samples were analysed with the Innov-X s handheld portable XRF system (soil, calcrete, rock sample), along with 129 re-assays of historic drill core samples from the South Australian Core Library. The aim of identifying indicators of basement mineralisation in the form of hydro-morphically dispersed copper and pathfinder elements within the Tertiary sediments. During the second licence year, Terramin facilitated Newmont Mining Corporation’s (Newmont) access to the property located on the southern boundary of MUTA. Due to difficulties accessing the prospective magnetic high of the Wild Horse geophysical feature Newmont elected to collect their proprietary Deep Sensing Geochemical (DSG) samples (123) over the apparent demagnetised alteration zone, that consisted of a 3 km orientation line. The DSG method uses a probabilistic method that combines the analysis of mobile elements present in soils and the analysis of a gas samples collected in the field to determine; geochemical anomalies, if an alteration system is present, the temperature of the system and even the bedrock lithology. Newmont’s DSG results indicate that there is a DSG anomaly indicative of a magmatic hydrothermal mineralisation signature occurring in proximity to the geophysical target. The DSG anomaly is associated with pathfinder elements such as arsenic and antinomy, but gold is not associated with the Min1 anomaly. Newmont inferred that any magmatic system that may be responsible for the DSG response may be a calc-alkaline Cu-Mo type porphyry. During the period Terramin undertook pXRF analysis of 40 soil and calcrete samples, and 9 biological samples (biogeochemistry – samples of branch and trunk). Samples collected from a mottled saprolite 220 m south of Newmont’s DSG anomaly retuned arsenic values up to 110 ppm.
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