Project Summaries

Geological setting and mineral system West Forbes lies in the northern Junee–Narromine Volcanic Belt of the Ordovician Macquarie Arc — the principal host of porphyry and high-sulphidation epithermal Cu–Au mineralisation in NSW, whose type deposits (Northparkes, Lake Cowal) are concealed and were defined from drilling rather than outcrop (R00042286). Prospective arc basement is concealed here beneath an interpreted 100–140 m of Cainozoic and Mesozoic cover. The target model is

Geological setting and mineral system Concealed early-to-mid Palaeozoic basement interpreted as the north-western extension of the Junee–Narromine Volcanic Belt of the Macquarie Arc, straddling the Lachlan–Thomson orogen boundary, under 150–200 m of poorly lithified Mesozoic–Cainozoic cover; there is no Palaeozoic outcrop and no pre-existing stratigraphic drilling through the cover. The former holder's geophysical interpretation (Douglas Haynes Discovery, from GSNSW datasets

Geological setting and mineral system The project sits in the concealed southern Junee–Narromine Volcanic Belt (JNVB) of the Macquarie Arc, Lachlan Orogen — the Ordovician–Early Silurian arc terrane whose principal endowments are intrusion-related, porphyry and porphyry-distal copper–gold systems, including Cowal, Northparkes and Marsden (Glen et al. 2007; analogues cited for geological context only). Basement beneath 3–37 m of alluvial cover at the historical collars (up to