Rare Earth potential at MANs Berinka tenement

Given the recent revelations here about lithium potential at our Berinka tenements (thanks to BelterTrades, Armitage Shanks, and others), I thought I would take a look at that other ‘so hot right now’ commodity, the rare earth elements (REEs).

Lo and behold, our Berinka ‘Terry’s prospect’ target, which Mandrake regards as an Au-Cu target (and is currently drilling), was formerly considered a ‘gold/REE’ target by Outback Metals (OUM) back in 2011! (image from OUM June 2011 quarterly):

Why was OUM looking for REEs at our Berinka tenement? Turns out, they were trying to re-discover a 6 metre hit of highly anomalous REEs in allanite veins, found just a few hundred metres north of the gold targets at Terry’s prospect, by Carpentaria Exploration Co. (CEC) in 1985.

The best hit featured: 491ppm Y, 445ppm Zr, 1.87% La, 2.46% Ce, 2320ppm Pr, and 5990ppm Nd.

(This came from costean (trench) sampling by CEC, so I assume was virtually at-surface)

That is super interesting, IMO, as the money in the REE basket is in the Pr and Nd, and they are very healthy hits (>0.8% NdPr, compare that to average NdPr of 0.4% at Hastings(HAS))/Yangibani, and 0.8% at Arafura(ARU)/Nolans).

I checked the original CEC logs (to save you the trouble, it’s on page 412 of CEC technical report 1427), and the thorium level for that Berinka sample was ~400 ppm, relatively low compared to other deposits, however the Uranium level was very high at ~500 ppm.

So, what happened back in 2011? It seems OUM couldn’t relocate the REE veins CEC found in 1985 and eventually sold the tenement.

So, I reckon this gives MAN the chance to uncover some seriously valuable REE ore if we can trace the source of those surface veins, perhaps associated with the gold around Terry’s Prospect, with the drills currently in the ground.

Also, this seems like another example of MAN hiding their light under a bushel so-to-speak, both lithium and REE potential at Berinka have almost never been mentioned by MAN afaik.

(all IMO only, please check my facts here, and DYOR)