NExUS 2022

NExUS 2022

By Holly Taylor and Madeline Buddee

The seventh year of the National Exploration Undercover School (NExUS) South Australian Summer School kicked off in late November 2022 with 36 early career geoscientists arriving in Adelaide for a terrific exploration field course. This two-week course was funded by the Minerals Council of Australia and OZ Minerals , and coordinated by Dr Richard Lilly from the 澳大利亚阿德莱德大学 (UofA).

NExUS is an exceptional opportunity for early career geoscientists to come together, combine expertise, create crucial networks and experience a different vantage point of the exploration industry, and its technologies.?

The 2022 cohort was a diverse group of geoscientists representing every State and Territory in Australia, from early career exploration geologists and geophysicists, to third year university students and everything in between.

It was a remarkable experience to be among such incredible geoscientists, who are the future of the Australian mining and exploration industry.??

The NExUS program aims to introduce the future challenges and opportunities the mineral exploration industry will face in Australia, and provide skills and knowledge to assist in addressing these issues.?This program focuses on four key UNCOVER themes. These themes include:

Theme 1?-?Characterising the Cover: New knowledge to confidently explore beneath the cover.

Theme 2?-?Investigating Australia’s Lithospheric Architecture: A whole-of-lithosphere architectural framework for mineral systems exploration.

Theme 3?-?Resolving the 4D Geodynamic and Metallogenic Evolution of Australia: Understanding ore deposit origins for better prediction.

Theme 4?-?Characterising and Detecting the Distal Footprints of Ore Deposits: Towards a toolkit for minerals exploration.?

Week 1

The first week of NExUS began in the state-of-the-art South Australian Drill Core Reference Library at Tonsley. Day one started out with an introduction to the program from Richard Lilly before Phil McFadden gave an excellent talk introducing the UNCOVER initiative and the challenges facing exploration and the mining industry as it moves towards a renewable future. The theme of the afternoon was deep geophysics where we heard from Stephan Thiel from the Geological Survey of South Australia (GSSA) and Graham Heinson (UofA) on Lithospheric architecture and magnetotellurics (MT).

We also had an introduction to South Australian Iron Oxide Copper Gold (IOCG) deposits from Mitchell Bockmann (GSSA) and Richard Lilly.

The first evening we heard from NExUS alumna Genna McDonagh ( Australian Institute of Geoscientists (AIG) and Brooke North ( OZ Minerals ) about the tips and tricks of joining professional societies and building careers in the mineral industry.

The first week continued at Tonsley with Carmen Krapf (GSSA) introducing the NExUS cohort to regolith. Carmen presented many exceptional interactive lectures and exercises on regolith such as how to characterise cover sequences, in situ regolith, regolith mapping and classifying regolith hand samples.

Richard continued with an excellent lecture on exploration geochemistry and biogeochemistry showing the group how plants can assist in finding mineral deposits (through geobotany and biogeochemistry).?In the evening we enjoyed a talk by Leon Faulkner from EnviroCopper and even managed to play some cricket with a soundtrack by Guns N' Roses, who were performing a concert at the Adelaide Oval across the road!

The third day begun at Hard Core drill bit factory ( Hardcore Diamond ) , which is the only Australian manufacturer of diamond drill bits for the exploration and mining industry. Mitch Martens showed us around, giving us an insight into how they make diamond drill bits and how they became one of the largest producers in the exploration industry.

This visit gave the cohort the opportunity to understand more about exploration drilling and in turn provided us with the confidence to talk to drillers and ask more in depth questions.

The theme for the rest of the day was critical metals where we heard from Tom Wise (GSSA) about exploring the Delamerian Orogen and the future of exploration drilling, as well as from Carl Spandler (UofA) and cohort member Jake Rowland (UofA) on critical metals and REE mineralisation and what Australia’s role into the future will be.

Anita Parbhakar-Fox , Laura Jackson and Kam Bhowany from the Sustainable Minerals Institute at 澳大利亚昆士兰大学 discussed the importance of mine waste and how we can reprocess and potentially explore for critical metals in existing waste dumps (#waronminewaste ).

After a delicious dinner at our beautiful accommodation ( St Mark's College, Adelaide ), Simon Marshall and NExUS alumna Ava Stephens from Newmont Australia came to discuss their perspectives on careers in exploration.?

The NExUS program takes place on the traditional lands of the Kaurna and Narungga people. On day four we had the privilege to gain incredible cultural information and knowledge by attending the Aboriginal cultural awareness training by Anthony Wilson . This session was invaluable and gave us an understanding of the culture of First Nations people and the connection they have to the land.

That afternoon the NExUS crew jumped on the bus to the historic Brukunga (former pyrite mine) site, where we learnt what not to do in mining and the long-term impact when mine planning goes wrong. This site is also host to the Boart Longyear drilling facility where we had the opportunity to see their new drilling technology with Ben Crettenden and Shauna Maguire as well as seeing their TruScanTM in action, which is an in-field drill sample scanning system that can provide same day geochemistry assay data.

After returning to St Marks, Ned Howard from Evolution Mining came to talk to the NExUS group about his career in the exploration industry and future career prospects.?

On Friday, the cohort attended the South Australian Exploration & Mining Conference (SAEMC), which was an incredible opportunity to network and learn about the mineral exploration industry in South Australia.

The excellent first week concluded on the Saturday with a relaxing morning yoga session, followed by a workshop with Jack Maughan and Rian Dutch from Datarock and Andrew McCulloch and Richard Scott from OZ Minerals where we discussed the importance of data science and machine learning in exploration.

Week 2

On Sunday, we departed Adelaide for the beautiful Yorke Peninsula. Prior to arriving at Wallaroo we visited the EnviroCopper Kapunda mine site, a historic copper deposit that was discovered in 1842. It was interesting to see the old mine site and hear about its impact on the area, and to learn about EnviroCopper’s plans for future in-situ copper recovery at the site.

After arriving at Wallaroo we spent the afternoon relaxing, swimming, fishing and playing beach cricket!?

The next morning was spent in lectures with Richard Lilly providing an important refresher on ore mineralogy and ore textures. Mario Werner and Carmen Krapf from the Geological Survey of South Australia joined us to introduce us to the geology of the Yorke Peninsula and the Gawler Craton. Later that day we donned our new NExUS hi-vis shirts and ventured into the field with Mario and Carmen to look at coastal outcrops near Wallaroo.?We thank Mario and Carmen for generously volunteering their time to provide us with an invaluable experience and knowledge of the area. ????

During this week, we spent multiple days based at the Rex Minerals Ltd (ASX:RXM) Hillside deposit. Here we looked at ore textures within drill core from the deposit to determine paragenesis and were introduced to a variety of exploration geophysics techniques and soil sampling.

The geophysical techniques were facilitated by Kelly Keates , and Michael Hatch from Zonge Engineering & Research Organization (Aust) Pty Ltd and included nanoTEM, and magnetics. Ben Kay and Goren Boren from the University of Adelaide also attended to instruct groups in use of magnetotellurics (MT) and hammer seismic. We were shown the results of our geophysics surveys, and compared them to both previous year’s results and what was already known about the Hillside ore body.??

During the evenings of week 2 the NExUS crew got to relax with activities including a geo-pub quiz, late night squid fishing, swimming, watching the geo-movies (e.g. Gold starring Matthew McConaughey), and attend a special beer and gin tasting session at The Bond Store, a local distillery and brewery in Wallaroo.

After a few days at the Hillside deposit, we had the opportunity to go fossicking for atacamite and molybdenite at the historic New Cornwell and Kadina mine sites before visiting the Moonta Mines museum. Here we took an educational tourist train ride through the historic tailings to learn about the impact that copper mining had on the area during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

This mining provided financial stability for the region impact, resulting in South Australia becoming the third largest copper producer in the world.

We also took the chance for a photo op in front of the former Moonta School of Mines.??

On our final day, we had our last lecture from Richard Lilly about the ‘real world’ of mining and exploration, before travelling back to Adelaide. After arriving back at St Marks we attended the action packed Day 3 of the Australia vs West Indies test match at Adelaide Oval.

We reflected on the rewarding two weeks we had experienced and on the close friendships formed before saying goodbye and heading home Sunday morning.?

NExUS is an invaluable course for early career geoscientists and we are beyond thankful for the opportunity to attend.

The program has introduced us to the challenges the Australian mining industry faces when exploring undercover and the techniques and skills needed to find new deposits in the future.

Just as importantly, NExUS has brought together a diverse cohort of early career geoscientists from across the country providing a close network, which we will carry with us throughout our career.??

The 2022 NExUS cohort would like to give a special thank you to Richard Lilly for all his hard work to make this amazing trip possible and to extend our thanks to all of the professional geoscientists, institutions and companies who have contributed to the success of the program, and to the 2022 primary financial partners: the Minerals Council of Australia and OZ Minerals !

The 2022 NExUS cohort are: Al -Tamini Tapu , Audrey Quealy , Bianca Renee P. , Blaire Johnson , Cait Stuart , Claudia Tomkins , Courtney Johns , Dana Imbrogno , Daniel Ireland , Dipanshu Sharma , Doug Mowbray , Emily Lewis , Erik Fabreschi , Fatemeh Amirpoorsaeed , Georgie Thorpe , Grace Smith , Hayden Scott , Holly Taylor , Jake Rowland , James Browne , Klara Johansson-Cranfield , Lluka Johns-Mead , Luke Heseldell , Madeline Buddee , Meshach Arebame , Nick Watt , Nicholas White, Pablo Farias , Richard Lewis , Sam Inskip , Dr Sanaz Orandi , Sarah Moses , Shannyn Pope , Solomon Jones , Tianjiao Yu , and Zhi Yen Yow

The NExUS SA Summer School takes place on the traditional lands of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide Plains and the Narungga people of the Yorke Peninsula. Ngadlu tampinthi ngadlu Kaurna-Narungga yartanka inparrinthi.