So, bit delayed but no one's paying me for this (least of all LI3), so here we go.
First up, soil locations on aerial photo.
The soil sample locations have been chosen to avoid the areas of transported cover in the deeper lake/mud flat systems. So a large part of the tenement lies below thick regolith and would need to be aircore drilled to test for gold anomalies.
Next up, the regional magnetics.I have highlighted the Au anomaly in yellow, the As 'anomaly' in red, and the multi-element anomaly (which is defined by the Mo-W-Sb-Te) in pink.
I have deliberately excluded the cartoony LI3 geology interpretation because it's trashy graphic designer bumf created for marketing and has zero, absolutely zero, relevance. You can see where the greenstones lie and make up your own minds about the position of the granite contacts.
Not much going on in the regional magnetics except a dyke. Remember that the 2 anomalous samples which exceed the background of spotty 1-2.5ppb Au. You will also notice the As and Au anomalies are not contiguous or coincident necessarily, so I wouldn't particularly say they must be associated in an alleged Au-As-Sb-Te-Mo-W system. Or maybe it's zoned? Who knows, but at 1000m x 500m offset grid, no.
So let's dive in to the nitty gritty of the Au anomaly.
This is the Bing aerial photos. You can see a NNE trend of lighter colour, probably sub-outcropping saprolite granite, maybe some quartz veins.
Wider afield, it is clear that this area is within a highly depleted residual laterite upland. There's a deeply incised relict escarpment a few klicks east in the excised ground, which suggests the area of this Au anomaly is a laterite carapace over the top of saprolised granite, and that the Au response is probably related to a thinner regolith profile in the area of the sampling. Brown = laterite, light tan/white = saprolite.
The effect of regolith can also be seen in the K radiometrics (GSWA 80m regional open file data) over the area. Here, yellow shows the areas of sub-outcrop. It is useful for assessing whether the anomalies lie on partly-exposed areas (yellow, moderate K rads) or under depleted regolith (blues).
So, what have we learned, childrens?
Firstly, the soil anomalies have to be related to regolith and interpreted in that context.
Secondly, they are controlled by regolith.
Thirdly, don't believe cartoony worthless geology interpretations like these. Interpretation is being too generous, so let's go "stylised marketing gumf".
Question whether 2 +10ppb soils 1km apart constitute an anomaly, or even a gold deposit. Ridicule those who say it does.
