In late 1959, Union Oil Development Corporation, a wholly owned subsidiary of Union Oil Company of California, and the Kern County Land Company, also of California, entered into an agreement with Australian Oil and Gas Corporation Limited to conduct an exploration programme on lands of Authority to Prospect 57P, Queensland, and Petroleum Exploration Licences E2, E6, E7, and EB, New South Wales. As part of the programme, surface geological studies were made of the concessions and adjoining areas. This report is concerned primarily with this aspect of the exploration.
The surface reconnaissance was carried out intermittently from November, 1960 to October, 1961. The area reconnoitred, approximately 40,000 square miles, is bounded roughly by the towns of Rolleston and Banana in Queensland and Narrabri and Inverell in New South Wales (Fig. 1). The region is accessible by several major paved highways and a connecting network of dirt roads and stock trails. Department of the Army 1: 250 ,000 sheets were used as a base map for the work; planimetric control was by car odometer and elevation control, where required, by aneroid barometer. Field samples, both lithologic and palaeontologic, are indexed on the geological maps and are stored at the offices of Union Oil Development Corporation, Toowoomba, Queensland.