Opening up New Areas for Exploration in Queensland

Abstract

The Queensland Government, through the Department of Mines and Energy, is actively seeking to increase exploration activities in the State. Two dedicated programs: Smart Exploration and Smart Mining – Future Prosperity are running concurrently, aimed at collecting new regional-scale geoscientific data to better define the State’s resource potential.

The Smart Exploration program commenced in 2005, with the data acquisition phase now complete. A$10 million has been spent acquiring airborne magnetic, radiometric and gravity data in the Mt Isa region and the Bowen and Surat Basins. Swaths of Hymap Hyperspectral data were also collected in the Mt Isa region.

The Smart Mining – Future Prosperity program commenced in 2006 providing a further A$19 million funding injection for geoscientic data acquisition. Airborne geophysical and gravity surveys are planned for Charters Towers, Cape York and Cooper Basin. In addition, deepcrustal seismic profiles and coincident magnetic-telluric studies have been undertaken in the Mt Isa region to assist predictive mineral discovery. Further Hyperspectral data collection has also been planned along key elements in the Mt Isa, Georgetown Charters Towers and Drummond Basin regions.

At the end of these programs, 75% of Queensland will be covered by airborne magnetic and radiometric data at 400m line spacing or better, and at least 65% of the State will have gravity readings on a 4km grid or better.

Technical Area: General – Session on Geophysics in Government Surveys