The history of mineral sands in the Murray Basin ‘Is it a new mineral sand frontier - or just more of the same?’

Abstract

The Murray Basin is one of the major mineral sand production areas in Australia. Exploration for mineral sands commenced in 1970, following the discovery of strandlines in a quarry near Kerang. The first significant mineral sand discovery was made by CRA Exploration in 1982 at WIM150 near Horsham, a very fine-grained offshore deposit. While this was the catalyst for exploration in the Murray Basin, it was not considered to be economic at the time and there was a further wait until 1996 when the first true economic strandline deposits were discovered. Mining in the Murray Basin commenced in 2000 and the development since then has continued to expand and extend the importance of the Murray Basin for current and future production of mineral sand products for the world market.