Heavy Mineral Sands in the Eucla Basin, Southern Australia: Deposition and Province-Scale Prospectivity

Abstract

The marine Eucla basin in southern Australia is emerging as a major new heavy minerals province in Australia. Beach placers are associated with a series of partially buried Cenozoic coastal barrier sands formed along an arcuate 2,000-km-long basin margin, the trace of which is up to 320 km inland of the present coastline. The presence of high-grade deposits with dominant zircon over ilmenite and lesser amounts of rutile and leucoxene was established with the discovery of the Jacinth and Ambrosia heavy mineral deposits in late 2004. An additional 10 heavy mineral prospects were subsequently identified and are at various stages of evaluation. The Eucla basin and its adjacent paleovalley system have a large areal extent that contains a complicated succession of marine and nonmarine strata spanning a wide range of depositional environments. Four distinct constructional phases for the development of shorelines can be recognized and correlated with major third-order sea-level events, established by others from the marine depositional record as occurring during the middle Eocene (~42.5 Ma), late middle Eocene (39–36 Ma), late Eocene (36–34 Ma), and Miocene-Pliocene (15–2.6 Ma). Prevailing westerly winds built extensive dune systems by longshore drift. Sediment movement was from west to east. Detrital zircon rocks from the Ooldea and Barton barriers show a distribution of zircon age that is consistent with the Proterozoic Musgrave province to the north of the basin as the dominant primary source area of the heavy minerals, with a contribution from the Albany Fraser orogen to the west. The likelihood is that these heavy minerals have been recycled via sedimentary basins that flank the Musgrave province and include the Neoproterozoic to Cambrian Officer basin and Permian to Mesozoic deposits of the Bight basin. Our current depositional model is summarized as follows: (1) initial rapid transgression and deposition of a shallow marine sand sheet subsequently overlain by shallow marine limestone during middle Eocene; (2) a major Eocene transgression and deposition of a shelf, barrier, and lagoonal shoreface marine complex during the late middle Eocene; ( 3) further transgression and highstand deposition during the late Eocene; (4) renewed transgression of barrier, lagoonal, and possibly flooding deltaic sand blanket in the southeastern coastal plain with neotectonic uplift tilting in the western Eucla margin during Mio-Pliocene time. Each stage of reworking increased the potential for heavy mineral concentration in placer deposits.