An attenuated licence area extending for 40-75 km north to north-east of Penong was taken up to explore part of the eastern margin of the Eucla Basin for possible economic buried Tertiary detrital heavy mineral (HM) marine sand placer deposits. Over the period 1/12/2010 to 6/5/2011, Iluka acquired a detailed regional low level airborne magnetic and radiometric survey [for discussion about the EL 4288 - relevant subsets of these geophysical data, see Env 11092]. The survey operation was based out of the airstrip at the Jacinth mine, and aerial coverage began at a point ~33 km to the south-east of there and extended outwards in the same direction to ~35 km north of Ceduna. The flight lines were spaced 100 m apart, and the fixed-wing recording platform used a mean sensor height of 20 m above the ground surface. The resulting radiometric data were processed for Iluka by a consultant geophysicist into a number of composite and ratio plots, using the uranium, thorium, and potassium radiation spectral bands. These plots were used to generate radiometric anomalies for selection for follow-up via surface sampling and drill testing. Exploratory aircore traverse drilling was undertaken on EL 4288 by Iluka over the period February 2012 to September 2013, when a total of 104 vertical holes were completed at 800 m intervals along traverses spaced 4 km apart, for a combined penetration of 4758 m. This drilling targeted a postulated extension of the Bay of Plenty palaeoshoreline that had previously been recognised to lie on the adjacent tenement EL 5539. The target sequence for demonstrating an extension to this palaeogeographic area was a mineralised foreshore sequence of Ooldea Sand sediments occurring in a postulated equivalent stratigraphic position to the nearby Tripitaka deposit. The subject drillholes were terminated either in lagoonal facies sands, or mostly in a strongly foliated granite which was interpreted to be basement to the overlying sedimentary package of 20-30 m thick, red-orange to yellow, fine to medium grained, variably moderate to good sorted, unconsolidated dune sands. The dune sands transitioned laterally into dominantly fine grained, well sorted, marine sands. Although such marine sands were intersected, there appeared to be a lack of trap sites and accommodation space with the ability to accumulate economic volumes of HM. No significant HM mineralisation was intersected; the best intercept was made in hole YE10148, of 2.1% HM over 1.5 m at a depth of 12 m. 77 bottomhole basement drill cuttings samples from this drilling programme were assayed using a portable XRF spectrochemical instrument to look for indications of any non-HM mineral commodities. No trace element readings of interest were recorded. Subsequently, Iluka stated that it was not aware of the existence of any other features that would warrant it doing further HM exploration in the EL 4288/5501 area. Due to the now perceived diminished prospectivity of the licence for HM or other minerals, Iluka applied to DPC on 15/3/2018 to fully surrender its tenure. Farminee Doray Minerals had lately concluded that the licence area does not hold good potential for placer gold, and thus was happy for Iluka to proceed with the surrender.