5 Days of drilling left at Fairwater, page-30

I've been thinking about the predominance of granite\gniess enveloping the mafic\u.mafic and the geological structure and the only analogous deposit I could think of is the Avebury deposit in Tassie, a group of nickel sulphide rich, skarn-like deposits. "The host rocks are a series of Cambrian sediments, mafic volcanics and ultramafic flows or intrusives. Nickel mineralisation in the host rock sequence was remobilised by the Devonian Heemskirk Granite intrusion, then focused and redeposited in trap sites around the top and margins of the altered ultramafic body. 3 Mt reserves at 1.54 % Ni." (http://www.allegiance-mining.com.au/default.asp?id=29)

They conclude that "the Avebury Ni deposit is a hydrothermal Ni deposit in which the Ni was sourced from the ultramafic or mafic rocks at depth below the deposit. However, rather than being liberated from the mafic minerals (for example olivine and orthopyroxene), instead base and precious metals were mobilised from magmatic sulphides by fluids associated with the intrusion of the Heemskirk granite (see Fig). Mineralisation within the Avebury deposit represents a very strongly metasomatised magmatic Ni-Cu-PGE sulphide deposit."

Although it's very early days, the very low copper content at FW corresponds to a very poor correlation between Ni and Cu at Avebury, which is highly suggestive of a hydrothermal origin for the mineralisation present at Avebury. http://www.academia.edu/190730/_The...se_study_of_an_unconventional_Nickel_deposit_

This is the best bit: "The fact that magmatic Ni-Cu-(PGE) sulphides were deposited in mafic/ultramafic rocks that underlie the Avebury Ni sulphide deposit means the entire Cambrian magmatic suite of mafic and ultramafic rocks of which Avebury is a part have considerable potential as hosts for economic grades and tonnages of magmatic Ni-Cu-(PGE) sulphides."