Thanks folks. Great to have a company like DRE who explore with way more success than I ever experienced.
Part of the reason is economic and mineral cycle/disruption based but there is also technology improvements that help the explorers. Add in a dash of luck and voila.
Most of the C2-5 area gets passes from the Free sentinel satellite system 2 times every five days. Been cloud free for awhile meaning DRE's activities are generally fairly obvious. From the 26th to the latest imagery on 28/10:
- At least two more drill sites completed on C5 which probably means all the phase 1 planned holes/site prep for C3-5 is complete (caveat - interpretive)
- The infill site preparation mentioned in my previous post appears to have been completed by the 26th of Oct. with no obvious additions since.
- DT mentioned the rig was drilling 2-3 holes per day. Where did it go after "completing" phase 1 on C5? Not C2 IMO. C1 has one possible site but this is probably a furphy as it is too far north. The most likely area is the recently prepared infill sites however, spotting drill activity gets tricky as the drill density increases.
Putting this into images:
This is a different satellite base to the same area in the original post..
- 3 complete new lines with 80m spaced holes.
- 4 sites spotted on original first pass drilling lines. Suspect some holes may have been missed as 80m coverage would not be achieved without some more holes along these 'old' lines.
- The location of holes 1 and 10 is highlighted to show that the infill is possibly independent of those reported results and more likely follow up around white circles numbered 23-33 (arbitrary numbering system).
- The rate of drilling post Fences 1 and 2 has surprised me but holes do not have to be too deep, moves are short and terrain relatively(?) flat.
- Why these sites and not 80m either side of hole 1 (38m) or hole 10. DT's comments about not relenting and 4-5 rigs at Mangaroon in Q2(1?) next year (including diamond rig at the Carbonatites) does suggest they have something encouraging in C3. SPECULATIVE ONLY AT THIS TIME.
Magenta Hexagon two recently completed (interp) drill sites on C5. Other symbols as per previous posts. Except blue yellow stars - best reported PXRF intersections holes 1 and 10(SE).
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C7.
As with C3/4 and the rest of C1-5 drilling is needed to see if parts of the anomaly (or all - unlikely) are possibly economic.
Available data
High resolution magnetics, probably from DRE 2021 survey, just happens to show a ring feature that plots in the same location shown for C7. Not large and peripheral to a weak to moderate thorium anomaly.
Geophysically it is in a gap in the folded sequence with a strong NNE/SSW trend (fault/dyke?) to the north. Professional Geophysical interp would be interesting.
Hi Res satellite imagery
Sicily (C7) at the foot of Italy! Marginal thorium (white) with orange mod/high Th.
There is probable ironstone scree on the surface and hints that ground exploration has confirmed carbonatite to be present. A couple of samples were taken but results pending - vague recall so DYOR.
It is not a big anomaly so a high percentage would need to be mineralised or high grade to make it economic as a standalone resource. As a satellite deposit with a modest resource to economic deposits elsewhere... possible.
For completeness C6. From an earlier post
C6.The magnetic anomaly for this is large enough to show up on the GSWA geoview Magnetics - horseshoe shaped brown anomaly. LB did show me the immediate area with DRE detail mag. Essentially the same just much better definition.The Pimple to the north of the "horseshoe" is a mafic intrusive that is visible on GE and the thorium imagery (as a distinct low). DT mentioned an association between mafic intrusives and carbonatites is not uncommon.
Lots of interesting thorium anomalies around that seem to bear limited to no relationship to the low resolution magnetics.
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Syenite at C3/4.
From Porter Geoscience on the Miaoya REE deposit in China.
The complex is predominantly syenitic in composition and is zoned from a fine-grained texture in the centre, through xenomorphic granular in the middle and porphyritic on the outer edge (Zhang, et al., 2019). The mineralogical composition of the syenite is relatively homogenous, predominantly composed of K feldspar with lesser microcline, biotite, albite, plagioclase, quartz and sericite, together with minor zircon, monazite and kaolinite, nioboaeschynite, pyrochlore and Fe-Ti oxides, and have positive Nb, Ta, Zr and Hf anomalies with primitive mantle-normalised patterns. Euhedral K-feldspar crystals constitute over 70 vol.% of the rock, and are classified as orthoclase and microcline based on their microstructures. Zircon occurs as individual 0.2 to 1 mm long grains or mineral aggregates that are euhedral to subhedral (Su et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2020).
There are two types of carbonatite: calciocarbonatites and ferrocarbonatites. Calciocarbonatites consist mainly of calcite, apatite and biotite, together with allanite, monazite, bastnäsite(-Ce), and parisite-(Ce). Ferrocarbonatites, which are the later products of the complex, occur as dykes cutting both calciocarbonatites and syenites. They contain ankerite, calcite, apatite and fluorite, bastnäsite-(Ce), and parisite-(Ce). The carbonatites have lower Nb, Ba, U, Th and Zr, but higher P, Sr and REE concentrations than the associated syenites. However, both rock types have similar zircon U-Th-Pb ages (440 to 430 Ma), and nearly identical initial 87Sr/86Sr ratios of 0.70325 to 0.70413, and εNd(t) values of 2.5 to 3.2, implying that they were derived from a common source of carbonated silicate magmas (Su et al., 2019).
May be coincidental that C3/4 have syenite intrusives as well but this is another example of a DEPOSIT that has the same association.
As with C6 and mafic intrusives INTERESTING.
The day calls Sunny for a rare change.
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@Zior's comments about results are very germane.
The above is speculative, in part, so do not act without doing your own research.
(20min delay)