Apatite fission track analysis (AFTA), detailed source rock property and organic maceral vitrinite reflectance data has been collected from several key wells neighbouring the Eringa Trough, as part of a collaborative ARC grant project run by MESA and the NCPGG. The Eringa Trough, located beneath the western margin of the Great Artesian Basin in South Australia and the Northern Territory, contains up to 2500 metres of combined Permian Pedirka Basin and Mesozoic Eromanga Basin section overlying Palaeozoic units equivalent to the Amadeus Basin. The AFTA and reflectance data show that up to 40 degrees Centigrade elevated palaeotemperatures have occurred over a large part of the western Great Artesian Basin margin in the last 150 Ma. Likely causes for these elevated palaeotemperatures are burial prior to uplift and erosion of Cretaceous section, and heating related to hot water moving through Mesozoic aquifers. Significant erosion of Cretaceous section in the Late Cretaceous-Early Tertiary and later in the mid Tertiary is held most likely. Extrapolating such thermal history constraints from the margins, thermal history modelling suggests that the base of the Permian in the deepest part of the Eringa Trough entered the upper part of the oil window in the Permian and passed through the main oil window in the Cretaceous. The base of the Eromanga Basin sequence entered the oil window at approximately 100 Ma, and reached maximum maturity in the mid-Tertiary. The top of the oil window is closer to the surface than previously thought, making the shallow prospects delineated in SA and the NT more prospective. By comparison with neighbouring Pedirka and Simpson Basins source rock qualities and depositional characteristics, both the Permian and Jurassic source facies should be better developed in the centre of the Eringa Trough, where they are likely to have experienced temperatures suitable for hydrocarbon generation. Any hydrocarbons generated may have been trapped in structures within the trough, rather than migrating high onto the eastern flank of the trough where petroleum exploration wells in SA and the NT failed to detect hydrocarbons.