Discovery
The Maggie Hays deposit was first officially discovered in 1996 by LionOre Australia, although it had essentially been found by prospecting in the 1970s by Anaconda Mines (now Minara Resources) and Union Miniere, who had first discovered a nickel geochemical anomaly and drilled the disseminated halo, but missed the lucrative high-grade massive sulfide mineralisation by as little as 3 metres.
The recognition of the Maggie Hays orebody by LionOre geologists in the late 1990s was based upon electromagnetic geophysical surveys and deep diamond drilling of conductive anomalies. LionOre geologists credit the discovery to recognition of the electromagnetic response and drilling of the anomaly, however it is widely recognised that the initial discovery was based upon literature research and the fact that in the late 1970s and 1980s Union Miniere/Anaconda relinquished the tenements in a period of unfavorably low nickel prices.
Reassessment of the geophysical signature at Maggie Hays indicates that the hangingwall banded iron formation is as conductive as the massive sulfides, and that on this basis, as well as the steep orientation of the massive nickel sulfides, Maggie Hays is essentially blind to discovery.
The Emily Ann orebody is situated approximately 1200m north of the Maggie Hays orebody and was drilled first in 1998 after a prolonged and saturated effort to elecromagnetically prospect the entire prospective belt. The Emily Ann orebody was unequivocally discovered by geophysical surveying, the result of a flatter orientation of the orebody, the fact it is hosted within conductively dead felsic gneiss, and the depth of the upper parts of the orebody reaching to within 200m of the surface.
The Emily Ann discovery was a technical triumph, because it is a mechanically displaced recumbent fold of sheared massive sulfide hosted several hundred metres off the original ultramafic-felsic conact in a position not generally expected to host nickel sulfides.
Read more about this topic: Emily Ann And Maggie Hays Nickel Mines
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