Ongoing coal exploration conducted by Western Mining Corp. in the upper South-East region has targeted commercial-grade lignite occurrences within the Tertiary upper Dilwyn Formation, which may have formed in geological settings similar to that of the recently discovered very large Kingston coal deposit (having a 985 Mt Measured and Indicated resource). The aim was to find a lignite body, of 150 Mt minimum size, which could support a small but viable power station. In February 1989, a 1574 square km portion of EL 1430 comprising 63.8% of its originally granted area was relinquished. Within it, reconnaissance exploration for lignite had been carried out at the Bin Bin prospect, located 25 km east of the Kingston coal occurrence, which had entailed the acquisition of four traverses of TEM surveying totalling 32 line km, plus rotary mud drilling and geophysical logging of 13 vertical holes totalling 750 m. No lignite seams were encountered in the Tertiary sequence here, and therefore tenure of the surrounding ground was dropped. In February 1990, another 474 square km part of the licence comprising a narrow strip running along its western side was also relinquished. There, 26 vertical rotary mud holes (total 1307.7 m) had been drilled to test Tertiary sediments overlying a basement high, just to the west of the Kingston trough. Only two of the holes encountered coal seams before reaching the unconformity with Ordovician granite basement, but the seams were regarded as being too thin and of too poor a quality to be economic. Those seams, initially found in hole SE235, were later cored in an adjacent sampling hole, SE239.