Company Projects

Tiwi Islands | Cape York | Carnarvon | Pender

Pender Project, Western Australia

The Pender Project, situated on the Dampier Peninsula north of Broome in Western Australia comprises nine exploration licences, 2 of which are ungranted. The licences cover some 1,600 sq km targeting Quaternary and Cretaceous age dunes and palaeostrand deposits adjacent to the modern coast and further inland where they are buried beneath extensive sandplains.

Past exploration has been limited, but drilling near Thomas Bay in 1952 reported 50,000 tonnes of sand containing 50% heavy mineral. These heavy mineral assays contained elevated zircon and rutile levels similar to those at the Eneabba mineral sands deposits.

The near-coast sandplains present immediate exploration targets as they can be clearly delineated from aerial photography. It is Matilda Minerals' strategy to apply similar exploration methods as used on the Tiwi Islands to these coastal sandplains in the Pender area. The inland targets will require detailed ground magnetic surveys to delineate drill targets as any heavy mineral deposits are covered by younger sandplains. Major mining companies, Rio Tinto and Iluka are both exploring for mineral sands in the same region.