The Georgina Basin: Sixties data; seventies interpretation; for eighties? discoveries?

Abstract

Exploration in the sixties has indicated that promising mineral potential of the Adelaidean to Cretaceous sediments of the Georgina Basin (see figure) lies in phosphates, and possibly lead-zinc deposits and hydrocarbons, within Cambrian and Ordovician sediments. Phosphorite has been mined from the thick accumulation of sediments in the Burke River Structural Belt, and found elsewhere; the hydrocarbon search has been most promising in the west in the Toko Syncline (Harrison, 1979).To help put future resource studies of this area on a broader base, a Bureau of Mineral Resources (BMR) multidisciplinary team undertook an overview interpretation of the geology and available regional geophysics in late 1978 to determine the structure and extent of the Georgina Basin and the upper crustal geology of the region. Principal finding, based on assumptions of rock physical properties, was that there may be 10 or more areas of thick preserved Adelaidean to Lower Cambrian sediments, and five of Palaeozoic sediments.