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Location: 420 km NE from Perth, Western Australia, Australia
Suite 1G, Building 1, Kings Row Office Park, 52 McDougall StreetPO Box 1148MiltonAustralia4064
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The tenements held by Macarthur Minerals Limited (MMS) are known to be prospective for nickel and gold as well as iron ore. The iron mineralisation is related to the extensive Banded Iron Formation (BIF) that occurs throughout the tenements. Iron mineralisation currently being explored comes in two forms:- Magnetite - present in the fresh BIFs along with high quantities of silica. This is the primary unaltered form of BIFs at site and in general has not been subject to any significant later iron enrichment.- Hematite/Goethite - present in the weathered BIFs with lower quantities of silica. It is the product of supergene enrichment of the BIFs, which results in the leaching of the silica from the primary fresh BIFs and in some cases addition of iron from mineralising solutions. This results in elevated iron content in comparison with the fresh BIF.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 70° and 90° with variable dip directions dependent on the location within the deposit. The main units in Drabble Downs are generally shallower dipping (50° to 80°) 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.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 direction;- D2 and D3 - shortening and shear movements in the ENE-WSW compression direction;- D4 - Lateral extension of the greenstone belt in a NNW-SSE direction.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.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 contemporaneous 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 most recent notable tectonic event was approximately 2.6 billion years ago and appears to have dilated the north-northwest trending shear zones, generated north-northeast trending and conjugates northeast to easterly trending structures. These brittle fractures have in many places been intruded by granitic dykes or quartz veins. The project tenements cover about 60 kilometres of the greenstone belts strike length but because of fault repeats are estimated to cover more than 150 kilometres of BIF sequence strike length.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 a 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 bands 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 rocks of the Macarthur Iron Ore Project have been logged into six different weathering classifications:- Complete - All clay with no remnant rock texture;- Extreme - Largely clay with some remnant rock texture;- Strong - Rock texture moderately preserved, significant presence of fines, often weak;- Moderate - Rock texture fully preserved, all minerals show weathering;- Partial - Oxidation limited to the most unstable minerals only (e.g. sulphides);- Fresh - No oxidation of any minerals.The majority of the hematite/goethite mineralisation grade (>50%Fe) material is located within the Strong and Moderate classifications. The boundary between partial oxidation and fresh rock has been determined to be variable within this area with down hole (-60° dip) depths ranging from 30m to 100 m.
