John Anderson - Why I keep returning to South Australia
Why I keep returning to South Australia: “A mineral province is only as mature as the last idea”
Ideas arising from discoveries and collaborative research undertaken in South Australia by the presenter’s teams over 32 years are reviewed and integrated with the research breakthroughs of precise dating and magneto-telluric mapping of minerals systems. The resulting hypotheses are a single Olympic Metallogenic Event with a spectrum of deposit styles including porphyries, a common mega-caldera setting and improved target vectoring using tectono-stratigraphy and a simple wholerock geochemical pathfinder.
There is potential for large shallow deposits that were blind to prior geophysical targeting tactics, so regional drainage geochemistry also returns to the fore. The integrated approach was successfully initiated for the 2019 Explorer Challenge around Prominent Hill DeepSightX: A Multidisciplinary Approach | Explorer Challenge | Unearthed, expanded in the 2020 ExploreSA Gawler Challenge and then extended to the Kanmantoo/Delamerian in 2021. A portfolio of target areas is now established for copper gold, lead zinc silver, nickel, platinoids and REEs, mostly in others’ tenure or government moratorium areas.
Ways should be found to undertake research and to test ideas and targets more widely and rapidly to optimise the State’s development.