Goulburn Explanatory Notes

Abstract

The Goulburn 1:250 000 map sheet area (Goulburn250) lies largely within the Southern Highlands of eastern New South Wales, and is centred about 170 km southwest of Sydney and 80 km north of Canberra. This area is subject to increasing land use pressure, with demand for industrial sites adjacent to existing infrastructure and for semi-rural residential blocks. The Goulburn area is an important supplier of extractive minerals for the expanding metropolitan areas, agriculture and metalliferous mining. The Goulburn Mapping Project has provided detailed up-to-date geoscientific data to assist mineral exploration and resource identification and will contribute to informed land use decisions in the future. These explanatory notes provide a detailed description of all lithostratigraphic and plutonic units, the structural and metamorphic framework and a synthesis of the geological history and major mineral systems of goulburn250. This publication accompanies a series of six detailed 1:100 000 surficial geology maps (including Cainozoic cover), one detailed 1:50 000 geology map of the Yass Basin area, and the second edition 1:250 000 solid (basement) geology map. This work is supported by high-resolution airborne radiometric, magnetic and digital elevation data, and a 4 km x 4 km regional gravity grid. The map sheet area lies in a relatively well-exposed region of the eastern Lachlan Orogen which developed at the convergent eastern margin of the Gondwana Craton during the Ordovician to Carboniferous. The orogen developed through several cycles of sedimentation, volcanism and plutonism, generally related to crustal extension associated with subduction, separated by relatively short-lived compressional orogenic events. Overlying Permian rocks of the subsequent Sydney Basin crop out near the eastern edge of the area and Cainozoic basalt and unconsolidated sedimentary deposits locally mask the older sequences.

Reference

Thomas O.D. & Pogson D.J. (compilers) 2012. Goulburn 1:250 000 Geological Sheet SH/55-12, 2nd edition, Explanatory Notes. Geological Survey of New South Wales, Maitland, NSW.

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