Hi Everyone.
This note, already published on our Facebook page and shared to the local Community Groups, is to advise you that we will be doing some unobtrusive field work shortly. The work will most likely mainly be occurring in the bush south of the Mt Egerton transfer station. It is scheduled for a few days around the end of this month. The exact timing is yet to be confirmed by the contractor but the feedback to-date points to early March.
So, if you see a parked vehicle or two, or a couple of people walking through the bush in that general area it may just be us.
There is not much in the way of visible rock outcrop throughout the area so we are hoping to be able to test if a non-invasive geophysics technique will be able to identify some of the geological detail below the surface, such as rock types, historical voids, and possibly also mineralised quartz veins and other geological structures.
The test work will be done pretty simply by two people, approximately 3m apart, slowly walking roughly east-west lines of about 100-130m. long, pulling a couple of 6m sensors along the ground behind them. One being a transmitter and the other a receiver plugged into a laptop PC. (Straight-ish lines, subject to being able to get through the thick weed growth in places).
The technology to be tested is called “ground penetrating radar” (GPR) and it has been reasonably successful in other settings with different rock types. Hopefully it will also work well enough in our area.
We are told it will probably be evident in real time if the system will work satisfactorily in our conditions (I.E a good return signal at the receiver sensor will either be evident at the time, or it will not).
If it is successful, we will do more line walking in due course, and this may require some mechanical weed clearing to be able to get through the worst areas. (Not a bad thing either as it seems that the weed problem appears to have been allowed by the land managers to go unaddressed in recent times).
It will be great if it does work, as it will mean that we may be able to piece together a reasonable 3D picture of what lies immediately beneath the ground surface with pretty much no disturbance to anyone. Also any future exploration drilling from the surface, (following up on some past pretty good results), could then be minimised by only focusing on any obvious target zones, instead of blanket drilling larger areas.
Please feel free to give us a call if you’d like any more information. (Terry: 0419 340 767).
We are keenly looking forward to letting you all know if the method works or not. – Watch this space. 