Geoscience Australia’s Exploring for the Future program provides precompetitive information to inform decision-making by government, community and industry on the sustainable development of Australia's mineral, energy and groundwater resources. By gathering, analysing and interpreting new and existing precompetitive geoscience data and knowledge, we are building a national picture of Australia’s geology and resource potential. This leads to a strong economy, resilient society and sustainable environment for the benefit of all Australians. This includes supporting Australia’s transition to net zero emissions, strong, sustainable resources and agriculture sectors, and economic opportunities and social benefits for Australia’s regional and remote communities. The Exploring for the Future program, which commenced in 2016, is an eight year, $225m investment by the Australian Government. This Record presents new U-Pb zircon geochronology from the Loch-Lilly Kars and Lake Wintlow (as described by Clark et al. 2024) Belts of the central Delamerian Orogen (Foden et al., 2020; Gilmore et al., 2023; Mole et al., 2023), performed on Geoscience Australia’s (GA) sensitive high-resolution ion microprobe (SHRIMP). The eight samples presented here (three sedimentary and five igneous rocks; Table i) were collected during Geoscience Australia’s drilling campaign across the region, which consisted of 17 drill-holes (Pitt et al., 2023), using two drilling techniques (coiled-tube rotary and conventional diamond). This work was performed as part of the MinEx CRC National Drilling initiative (NDI) and Geoscience Australia’s Darling-Curnamona-Delamerian project of the Exploring for the Future program (EFTF; <a href="https://www.eftf.ga.gov.au/">https://www.eftf.ga.gov.au/</a>). The primary aims of this drilling were to (1) understand and constrain the geology of the southern Loch-Lilly Kars Belt; and (2) assess whether Cambrian magmatic rocks continued to the south-west in the Lake Wintlow Belt, marking a possible continuation of the Stavely Belt volcanic arc rocks observed in western Victoria (Bowman et al., 2019; Lewis et al., 2016; Lewis et al., 2015; Schofield, 2018; Figure i). As both these regions are covered, this new drilling and the geochronology they allow provide the first constraints on the age of these rock units. In addition, due to the lack of surface correlation and detailed geological mapping, these units currently have no officially-defined stratigraphic nomenclature and remain unnamed. For detailed information on all drill-holes completed as part of the survey, we direct readers to the summary report by Pitt et al. (2023): <a href="https://ecat.ga.gov.au/geonetwork/srv/eng/catalog.search#/metadata/148639">eCat 148639</a>.

<div>Geoscience Australia’s Exploring for the Future (EFTF) program provides precompetitive information to inform decision-making by government, community and industry on the sustainable development of Australia's mineral, energy and groundwater resources. By gathering, analysing and interpreting new and existing precompetitive geoscience data and knowledge, we are building a national picture of Australia’s geology and resource potential. This leads to a strong economy, resilient society and sustainable environment for the benefit of all Australians. This includes supporting Australia’s transition to a low emissions economy, strong resources and agriculture sectors, and economic opportunities and social benefits for Australia’s regional and remote communities. The Exploring for the Future program, which commenced in 2016, is an eight year, $225m investment by the Australian Government.</div><div><br></div><div>As part of the program, Geoscience Australia (GA) provides a range of established techniques to capture precompetitive geoscience data across underexplored regions to stimulate industry investment in frontier regions of Australia. The Paleo to Mesoproterozoic Birrindudu Basin is an underexplored frontier basin located in northwestern Northern Territory and northeastern Western Australia. The Birrindudu Basin is a region of focus for the second phase of the EFTF program (2020–2024) as it contains strata of similar age to the prospective McArthur Basin, South Nicholson region and Mount Isa Province, but remains comparatively poorly understood. Furthermore, much of the age of the stratigraphy of the Birrindudu Basin, particularly the younger stratigraphic units, and regional correlations to the greater McArthur Basin remains provisional and speculative. Interpretation of industry seismic data indicates that Proterozoic strata in the western Beetaloo Sub-basin and eastern Birrindudu Basin are continuous in sub-surface.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</div><div><br></div><div>In order to provide an improved understanding of the stratigraphy, basin architecture and resource potential of the Birrindudu Basin and surrounding region, GA, in collaboration with the Northern Territory Geological Survey, is acquiring geophysical, geochronological, isotopic, geochemical and geomechanical data as part of phase two of EFTF. The data and results will be released, as they are available, through GA’s eCat Product Catalogue.</div><div><br></div><div>This report presents SHRIMP U-Pb zircon geochronology results on a single igneous sample taken from exploration drillhole LBD2, located in the Birrindudu Basin, intersecting both Paleoproterozoic Limbunya Group and underlying low-grade basement metamorphic rocks.</div>

<div>This Record presents new zircon U-Pb geochronological data, obtained via Sensitive High Resolution Ion Microprobe (SHRIMP), for 12 samples of igneous rocks from central and southern New South Wales, as part of an ongoing Geochronology Project conducted by the Geological Survey of New South Wales (GSNSW) and Geoscience Australia (GA) under a National Collaborative Framework agreement. Eight samples were selected to better understand the geological evolution and mineralisation history of areas prioritised for investigation by the MinEx Co-operative Research Centre (MinEx CRC) under its National Drilling Initiative (NDI) program. Three samples are from the northern Molong Volcanic Belt east of Dubbo (‘MXDU’), and five are from the eastern Lachlan Orogen near Forbes (‘MXFO’). The remaining four samples are from the central Lachlan Orogen in southern NSW, in support of GSNSW’s East Riverina mapping program (‘ERIV’). The results herein correspond to U-Pb SHRIMP zircon analyses undertaken by the GSNSW-GA Geochronology Project during the July 2020–June 2021 reporting period. All quoted uncertainties are 95% confidence intervals.</div> <b>Bibliographic reference: </b> Jones, S.L., Bodorkos, S., Eastlake, M.A.S., Campbell, L.M., Hughes, K.S., Blevin, P.L. and Fitzherbert, J.A., 2023. <i>New SHRIMP U-Pb zircon ages from the Lachlan Orogen, NSW: Dubbo, Forbes and East Riverina areas, July 2020–June 2021. </i>Record 2023/36, Geoscience Australia, Canberra. Report GS2023/0017, Geological Survey of New South Wales, Maitland. https://doi.org/10.26186/147971

<div>This Record is the fourth of a series of reports detailing the results of U–Pb dating of samples collected during investigations of the Mary Kathleen Domain and adjacent areas of the Mount Isa Inlier in 2018–19 by the Geological Survey of Queensland and co-workers (Kositcin <em>et al</em>., 2019, 2021, Bodorkos <em>et al</em>., 2020). It presents new Sensitive High Resolution Ion Microprobe (SHRIMP) U–Pb geochronological results for five samples collected from the inlier. Two of the samples are from units in the Kalkadoon–Leichhardt Domain and the remaining three from units in the adjacent Mary Kathleen Domain (Figure i). The ages of these units are poorly constrained and various ages have been proposed for most of them by different investigators.</div><div> <b>Bibliographic Reference:</b> Kositcin, N., Bultitude, R. J., Purdy, D. J. 2023. <i>Summary of results. Joint GSQ–GA Geochronology Project: Kalkadoon–Leichhardt and Mary Kathleen Domains, 2018–2020. </i>GSQ Record 2023/04, Geological Survey of Queensland. GA Record 2023/41, Geoscience Australia, Canberra. http://dx.doi.org/10.26186/148600 https://geoscience.data.qld.gov.au/data/report/cr141810