The Tasman Fold Belt System in New South Wales includes three out-cropping fold belts: the Neoproterozoic-Early Palaeozoic Kanmantoo Fold Belt, the Early Palaeozoic-Carboniferous Lachlan Fold Belt, and the Early Palaeozoic-Triassic New England Fold Belt. Substantial production of metal has come from mineral deposits in the Lachlan and New England Fold Belts and from alluvial deposits in their cover rocks. The Kanmantoo Fold Belt has a restricted range of mineralisation, which includes stratiform(?) iron-rich copper lodes in metamorphosed mafic volcanics, lead-silver veins and gold-quartz veins. Geological similarities with Victoria and Tasmania suggest potential for gold and base metals developed in Late Proterozoic-Cambrian mafic arc rocks. The Lachlan Fold Belt contains a wide range of deposits. The most important types are porphyry, epithermal and skarn-type copper, copper-gold, and gold deposits developed in Ordovician basaltic and andesitic volcanics (shoshonites) and associated intrusives; base-metal and gold deposits, with both volcanogenic (VMS) and thrust-related features, in Silurian felsic volcanic-sedimentary rock trough and basin sequences; tin, gold and smaller tungsten, molybdenum and base-metal deposits in Silurian and Early Devonian granites; large gold and base-metal deposits in Early Devonian turbiditic rocks in the Cobar region (Cobar-type deposits), probably formed during deformation and closure of the Cobar Basin; and gold vein deposits in folded sedimentary rocks, for example at Hill End. There is good potential for discovery of further deposits within the Lachlan Fold Belt and in extensions under cover rocks. The main targets are deposits related to Ordovician and Silurian volcanism, Cobar-type deposits and deposits associated with sutures and thrusts. Recent investigations suggest that a poorly understood, but possibly widespread, Late Carboniferous-Early Permian metallogenic epoch occurs in eastern Australia, covering parts of the Lachlan and New England Fold Belts. The New England Fold Belt in New South Wales can be characterised as a tin, gold, antimony province. Deposits formed in a variety of settings. The most important associations are: base-metal deposits in Early Permian felsic volcanics; gold-silver-base-metal deposits in Late Permian felsic to intermediate volcanics of the Drake area; tin, gold, molybdenum, bismuth and tungsten deposits associated with Late Permian-Early Triassic granites; and metahydrothermal gold, antimony and tungsten-bearing quartz veins occurring in faults, shears and joints commonly associated with regional dislocations (and thought to have formed from metamorphic dehydration of accreted sediments and volcanics). Recent exploration has located epithermal gold mineralisation in Early Permian intermediate and felsic volcanic centres, in previously unexplored areas of the Tamworth Zone in the west of the New England Fold Belt, which were probably related to rifting in the foreland (Meandarra Rift).
