The Cloncurry Multi Element Toolkit and Laboratory (METAL) project was undertaken by researchers at the CSIRO as part of the Queensland Government's Strategic Resources Exploration Program (SREP). The project is a district-wide, scale integrated, geoscience dataset containing information for 1590 samples, extracted from 23 deposits and prospects, across the Cloncurry District, Northwest Queensland. All data has been collected using a consistent methodology on 2 cm cylinders (standard palaeomagnetic “rounds”). It incorporates 2712 columns of scale-integrated data from 10 different analytical techniques measuring density, magnetic susceptibility, remanent magnetisation, magnetic fabrics using anisotropy of magnetic susceptibility (AMS), radiometrics, conductivity, modal mineralogy and texture from scanning electron microscopy (SEM) using the TESCAN Integrated Mineral Analyser (TIMA), geochemistry (from both portable XRF analyses and analysis of powders), and short-wave infrared (SWIR) hyperspectral data.

The Cloncurry Metal Database is the primary outcome of the project, and it is intended to be used by industry and research geoscientists to de-risk and improve exploration success in NW Queensland. Whilst we have generated a completely new approach to the acquisition of geoscience data in the generation of this complex scale-integrated multi-property database, we have also had to re-think how we use this unique dataset. This compilation includes nine parts detailing approaches we have developed to
1. Integrate the data
2. Understand the geological processes that underpin the data
3. Identify interrelationships between different datasets
4. Incorporate this new approach into exploration programs