Geoscience Australia, in collaboration with the Geological Survey of New South Wales and the Geological Survey of Queensland, have been collecting precompetitive geoscience data in the southern Thomson Orogen as part of the Southern Thomson project. This Project is designed to encourage industry investment in this poorly understood area, and spark interest by explorers to potentially discover a new minerals province. A stratigraphic drilling program was established to:
1. Develop baseline geologic constraints
2. Improve the understanding of basement geology
3. Better understand the potential for mineralisation.
In the frame of this project, hyperspectral data have been collected from mud rotary drill chips and diamond drill cores penetrating the Mesozoic Eromanga Basin into basement felsic igneous, clastic sedimentary and metasedimentary rocks of the southern Thomson Orogen. Geoscience Australia requested assistance from CSIRO in performing quality assurance (QA) by reprocessing and reinterpreting hyperspectral data collected from 14 boreholes to inform the components of the stratigraphic drilling program.
This report outlines the results of CSIRO’s reprocessing of the hyperspectral drill core data, which consisted of the following:
1. Quality Assurance (QA) on the data
2. Identification of visible to near infrared, shortwave-infrared and thermal infrared active mineral species
3. Identification of mineral assemblages
4. Comparison of mineralogy with other available geoscience data, such as geochemistry, where available.