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Location: 420 km NE from Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Suite G03, 555 Coronation DriveToowongAustralia4066
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The iron mineralisation is related to the extensive Banded Iron Formation (BIF) that occurs throughout the tenements. These outcrop over a combined strike length of at least 80 km. Aerial magnetics data shows that BIF units totalling at least 300 km of strike occur within the tenements, mostly under shallow cover. The focus of this document is the hematite/goethite style of mineralisation.MMS’s tenements cover most of the Yerilgee Greenstone Belt which is over 80 kilometres in length and up to 10 kilometres wide, and lies within the Southern Cross Province of the Yilgarn Craton. The Yilgarn Craton consists of multiple lenticular greenstone belts surrounded by variably foliated gneissic granitoids.The greenstone belts consist of metamorphosed ultramafic, mafic and sediments, including banded iron formation (BIF) which are Archaean in age and are commonly intruded by mafic, intermediate and granitic rocks.The greenstone belts are generally metamorphosed to mid greenschist facies towards the central parts of the belt and lower amphibolite facies on the edges of the belt where they are in contact with the granitoids.The greenstone belts are highly deformed, faulted and folded. Four deformation events are recognised regionally throughout the Yilgarn Craton: D1 - movement along the south-north directionD2 and D3 - shortening and shear movements in the ENE-WSW compression directionD4 - Lateral extension of the greenstone belt in a NNW-SSE direction. The hematite/goethite units are the source of MMS’s hematite/goethite resources that comprise the Ularring Hematite Project and exist largely as a supergene product. Weathering has resulted in the leaching of the majority of the silica from the BIFs, thus producing a rock rich in iron and low in silica. These enriched bands vary from 1m to 30m in true thickness and are largely steeply dipping between 70o and 90o with variable dip directions dependent on the location within the deposit. The main units in Drabble Downs are generally shallower dipping (50o to 80o ) to the south-west and appear to form the centre of the overall regional Snark fold sequence. Hematite/goethite mineralisation crops out in abundance at Snark, Drabble Downs, Central and Banjo, and in lesser amounts elsewhere on the tenements. These outcrops have been the focus of most of the drilling to date. More recently detailed mapping of sub-crop and careful step out drilling have shown that the hematite/goethite mineralisation can continue in areas of limited of no existing outcrop. The parts of the north-northwest trending Yerilgee greenstone belt covered by the project tenements are underlain by a layered succession of Archaean rocks. At the interpreted base of the succession is a sequence of high-magnesium basalt flows more than one kilometre thick overlain by komatiitic ultramafic volcanic rocks with narrow interflow BIFs and in some cases other sedimentary rocks. Further high-magnesium basalt lavas with occasional interflow BIFs overlain, possibly unconformably by sedimentary rocks (cherty, silicified, pyritic and graphitic) are thought to form the top of this sequence. In places gabbroic sills have been intruded into the lower mafic and ultramafic lavas. These are believed to be co-magmatic with the upper high-magnesium basalts. The elongated lens shaped Yerilgee belt is bounded by major north- northwest trending fault/shear zones. The Archaean sequence has been intensely folded. At least five possibly sinistral fault zones of similar but slightly more north-westerly trend are interpreted within the widest part of the belt. These are believed to successively repeat the layered succession. Also two northerly trending sinistral faults obliquely crosscut the belt in this area. A number of large synclinal fold structures have been identified. These appear to be located adjacent to the eastern margins of the fault blocks. These folds have north-westerly and north-north-westerly trending axes and where mapped in detail (Greenfield, 2001) show a plunge at 30° to 60° in the same direction. In general the fold axes are steeply dipping. The folding appears to have been ?ontemporaneous with faulting. In plan, the movement on the fault planes was sinistral but in a true sense is believed also to have been reverse faulting with the direction of movement on the western down-throw sides of the fault planes being inclined at 30° to 60° towards the east northeast. The synclines and anticlines are considered to be drag fold structures. The outcropping geology of the hematite areas are comprised of a combination of un-altered silica rich BIFs and altered, enriched hematite/goethite BIFs. The hematite/goethite units are the source of MMS’s hematite Mineral Resources to date and exist largely as a supergene product. Weathering has resulted in the leaching of the majority of the silica from the BIFs, thus producing a rock rich in iron and low in silica. These enriched bands vary from 1m to 30m in true thickness and are largely steeply dipping by 70o to 90o. The project area is comprised of multiple parallel bands of BIF, many of which are enriched, with varying (1m to 30m) thicknesses. The strike of these bands is largely NW-SE. A number of folds with an NW plunge have been identified with further work into the structure of the deposit on-going. The strike extent of the main ridge line at Snark is 5.9km and the package consisting of the multiple BIF bands along with the inter-bedded ultramafics has a thickness of approximately 500m. The drill tested area at Drabble Downs consists of three main BIF ridges with a combined strike length of approximately 3.4km.At Central drill tested BIF ridges cover a combined strike extent of approximately 10.5km. As at Snark the package consists of two main BIF ridges, each consisting of multiple parallel ands of BIF ranging from 1m to 30m thickness. The total package thickness including interbedded mafics and ultramafics is over 1km.The same geological package is repeated at both Banjo and at Moonshine. At Banjo the total strike length is approximately 4.0km and at Moonshine the total strike length is 0.8km. The mapped outcrops range from locally dark, rich and dense mineralized BIF; to porous and lateritic weathered BIF with locally enriched layers. In RC chips the mineralized material is dusty and brown and generally very fine grained.
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