The Charters Towers locality has been a historically renowned
gold producing region and discovery of new ore deposits during
the past decade have renewed exploration interests in the area.
Further mineral exploration with conventional techniques is
hindered by the presence of Cainozoic sedimentary deposits and
volcanic flows overlying a major portion of the basement
geology. Mineral exploration thus warrants new, innovative and
cost-effective methods to probe beneath the Cainozoic cover in an
attempt to discover new orebodies. There is growing awareness of
the role of weathering as an agent of chemical dispersion into the
cover sediments as well as a producer of supergene deposits in
tectonically stable cratons (Butt and Zeegers, 1992).
Consequently, landscape evolution coupled with regolith
geochemistry is one of the methods increasingly being used to
identify relevant sampling media to explore beneath weathered
cover sediments and deeply weathered bedrock terrain (Anand,
1993). The aim of this paper is to describe and elucidate the
regolith - landscape features of the region and combine
geochemistry to assess the pertinence of the same on mineral
exploration strategies in the Charters Towers area.