Exploration for possible economic lignite and coal that may occur within Tertiary sediments of the western Murray Basin covering the crest of the Padthaway Ridge, consisted of drilling 14 rotary mud vertical holes, 4 being partially diamond cored, that penetrated as far as the basement, with maximum hole depths reaching 158 m (aggregate total 1088.8 m, including 6.3 m cored). The holes were sited between outcrops of granite, where carbonaceous paludal sediments occurring above shallowly subcropping basement were anticipated. However, the drilling encountered only one thin and uneconomic band of lignite. The basement rocks gave no anomalous assay values. A fifteenth vertical hole, PD9 located 2 km east of Keith, was fully diamond drilled to TD 150.6 m during December 1979 to test the metallic mineral potential of a semi-coincident gravity/magnetic anomaly recognised there. Weathered granitic basement was struck at 89.8 m depth. No anomalous drill core sample assay values were returned. The source of the targeted geophysical anomaly is thought to be a fault-emplaced body of hornblende micromonzonite which was encountered at 125.0 m depth.