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Location: 70 km SE from Mount Magnet, Western Australia, Australia
Level 6 40 The EsplanadePO Box Z5431 St Georges Terrace WA 6831PerthWestern Australia, Australia6000
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GeologyThe Windimurra vanadium deposit is hosted within the Shepherd's Discordant Zone (SDZ), which is part of the Windimurra complex. The SDZ is characterised by magnetite and magnetite-bearing gabbro, which is a transgressive sill like body extending over a strike length of 45 kilometres and having a thickness ranging from 500 metres to 600 metres. It is up to 1 kilometres wide at surface. The magnetite is titano-magnetite containing 10% to 20% TiO2 as ilmenite.The Project is located in the north of the SDZ in the Hawkstone Ridge and Shepherd's Hill areas that show progressive upwards fractionation consisting of anorthositic magnetite gabbro and numerous magnetite layers and lenses from 5 centimetres to 2 metres thick. The lower 150 metres of this succession contains the vanadium deposit.The vanadium titanomagnetite (VTM) bearing gabbro is deeply weathered down to about 50 metres below the present surface. From fresh rock, weathering passes upwards through a zone of saprock up to 5 metres thick, into saprolite (30 metres to 40 metres thick), then to a mottled clay zone 3 metres to 10 metres thick. A lateritic caprock up to 5 metres thick has largely been eroded except in the vicinity of Hawkstone Ridge. The base of complete oxidation is about 30 metres below surface. The magnetite-bearing gabbro is more susceptible to weathering than the magnetite. Fibrous and spotty goethite appears from the weathering of magnetite and other iron-bearing minerals occurring along fractures and grain boundaries. Ilmenite remains relatively unaffected, apart from a textural change from the trellis-like lamellae to granular and rounded blebs.MineralisationMost of the vanadium mineralisation is VTM-bearing gabbro and leucogabbro in a broadly continuous layered sequence varying in thickness from 20 metres to 80 metres.The VTM forms large granular aggregates up to 5 millimetres wide, inter-grown with lenticular bodies of silicate minerals. The VTM is mainly composed of magnetite that can contain up to 30% by volume of ilmenite inter-growths derived from exsolution. The ilmenite occurs as fine-grained lamellae within fresh magnetite, with up to 10% as coarser, blebby inter-growths (<2 millimetres diameter) in weathered magnetite.Ilmenite may contain up to 0.5% V2O5 and some pyrite contains up to 0.1% V2O5. Pyrite makes up to 1% of the volume of fresh rock. Other minor sulphides present are pentlandite, pyrrhotite, chalcopyrite and violarite.The deposit represents part of a large layered intrusion. Mineralisation comprises magnetite- titanium-vanadium horizons within the Windimurra Complex — a large differentiated layered ultramafic to mafic intrusion within the Murchison Province of the Yilgarn Craton.
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