Between December 1977 and February 1978, 103 coal exploration and development holes were drilled in the Wakefield and Clinton coal deposits, 100 km north of Adelaide. These Tertiary deposits, in the northern extremity of the St. Vincent Basin, contain low-rank brown coal seams. The drilling was financed and controlled by the Electricity Trust of South Australia (ETSA) while the South Australian Department of Mines and Energy (SADME) was involved in planning and co-ordinating field activities and in assessing the geology of the area. The object of the programme was to determine suitability of the area for possible open-cut coal mining. Brown coal resources in this area had not been fully delineated by previous work (Meyer, 1976), and therefore the latest programme also attempted to define the coal limits, particularly toward the north. Previous investigations (Meyer, 1976) had shown that the coal has a high sodium/ash ratio and sulphur content, and might therefore cause major boiler fouling and pollution problems during combustion. Acoordingly, a site was to be selected in the most coal prospective area indicated by the new drilling, from which to take a large (over 500 tonnes) bulk sample for coal combustion tests. Overseas shipment of such a bulk sample to the US and West Germany, for optimum testing in pilot scale furnaces, was under consideration.