Nokaning Rock Project

The Nokaning Rock Project is centred on Nokaning Rock, approximately 15 kilometres west of Nukarni in the South West of Western Australia. The license covers undulating farming and agricultural land draining south-westerly into a braided saline stream channel in the upper reaches of the Swan - Avon drainage system. The License area is on the north east margin of a large batholith, approximately 100km in diameter, composed of porphyritic Achaean granite and adamellite, which has intruded an older sequence of granite gneiss, metamorphosed basalt, gabbro, banded iron formation and quartzite. Enclaves of these rocks are exposed on Danberrin Hill to the north and extend southwards into the license area. A network of thin aplite and layered pegmatite dykes and quartzite veins intrude all rock types about the batholith margin.

The Cainozoic deposits are gravels, sands and clays deposited in a palaeo-drainage channel associated with one branch of the Swan-Avon drainage system and a veneer of sand or lateritic sands overlying the Achaean rocks. Outcrop areas are fringed by scree and talus of weathered Achaean rocks and laterite gravels. Recent saline alluvium and gypsiferous sands occur in the braided drainage overlying the Cainozoic palaeo-drainage channel.

A uranium discovery, south west of Nokaning Rock, was reported to the Mines Department in late 1954. Samples submitted to the Department were tested and the presence of uranium confirmed. A geologist from the WA Department of Mines, accompanied by the property owner, undertook a field investigation in January 1955. He reported that a greenish radioactive mineral with greenish yellow fluorescence was associated with biotite in a composite pegmatite vein exposed in an exploration pit. Investigation of the area confirmed that radioactivity in the area was widespread with readings up to 8 times background recorded. Adjacent to the uranium discovery is an auriferous quartz vein which had been mined for gold. Values of up to 20ppm U, and 79ppm Th in whole rock analyses of granitic rock on the pluton margin at Goomarin were reported.

Processing of radiometric data covering the area extracted from an airborne survey completed during November 1997 confirms uranium anomalies coincident with the Cainozoic palaeo-drainage channel and overlying the Achaean granitic rocks.

The initial uranium discovery is defined as a discrete anomaly, one of the many overlying granite exposures in the license area. The highest uranium response in the survey area, equal to any radiometric response from drainage channels in the Goldfields, occurs over a series of lakes in the Cainozoic palaeo-drainage in the south west corner of the tenement. This is a virtually untested area with uranium mineralization in the granitic source rocks confirmed by the airborne radiometric survey and limited field observations. The potential for the discovery of uranium deposit within the Cainozoic sediments is high considering the size and magnitude of the airborne radiometric anomalies overlying the Cainozoic palaeo-drainage.