Summary:
The Fairbreeze paleo dune complex is an elongated body extending south-southwestward from the town of Mtunzini for about 12 kilometers, reaching a maximum width of about two kilometers and a maximum elevation of 109 meters. Surface drainages have dissected the deposit into five discrete ore bodies, Fairbreeze A, B, C, C-Extension and D. The deposit is hosted by fine-grained sand and silt in a north-northeast trending complex of strandline/paleo dune couplets two kilometers inland from the modem coastline.
Fairbreeze is part of a regional near-shore, coast-parallel corridor of terraces and dunes composed of reddish-colored sands, the “Berea Red Sands,” along the southeastern coast of Africa from Durban to Mombasa. As with most heavy mineral sand deposits, iron-titanium oxides, rutile, zircon and other heavy minerals in the HM assemblage at Fairbreeze are inherited from their source rock provenance and modified by selective sorting during deposition. The Natal Metamorphic Province and younger rift-related basalts are interpreted as the primary source for the Fairbreeze heavy minerals. Terrestrial weathering of terrace deposits to oxidize iron minerals, followed by a period of extensive reworking of coastal sediment by static sea levels completed the formation of the Fairbreeze deposit.
The Fairbreeze deposits consist almost entirely of older (Pliocene parent) Berea-type red sands, which have been exposed to a long period of weathering resulting in the disintegration of the original components to form silt-sized particles and clay. Progressive enrichment in the swash zones of several beaches, which developed along the large coastal beach/dune system, resulted in the concentration of heavy minerals.
Heavy minerals, derived from weathering of inland rocks and sediments, were deposited into the ocean by the Tugela River, concentrated because of progressive enrichment in the swash zones of several beaches, which developed along the large coastal beach/dunal system. Ilmenite, zircon and rutile represent the primary valuable heavy minerals (VHM) of this deposit.
The Fairbreeze deposits span 526 ha, with a total length of more than 15 km, striking 34 0, and reaching 630 m in width. Generally, the different ore bodies have depths close to 30m, and the elevation drops from around the 10m amsl in the southwest to around 70m amsl in the northeast.
Heavy minerals are disseminated in the dune systems with general preference of higher concentrations at the ridge of the dunes.