Man discovers rich deposit under outback dunny


A geologist sitting on a bush toilet in a remote part of the Northern Territory has discovered a potentially lucrative mineral deposit.

Rum Jungle Resources chief executive David Muller said the company was already looking for phosphate on a site near Barrow Creek, north of Alice Springs, but it was not expecting to find anything of value where it had set up its camp toilet.

"One observant geologist was sitting on it one day and kicking the rocks around and he suddenly identified some nodules and he thought, 'Oh we better assay this'," he said.

"And they put the hand-held spectrometer over it and sure enough it was full of phosphate, which is what we were looking for - and we thought we were on sterile ground."

Mr Muller said the discovery of phosphate under the toilet encouraged the company about the size of the phosphate deposit.

"Obviously, you don't put the camp where you're meant to be drilling so this actually found some phosphate and we all had a bit of a laugh about it.

"But it also gave us a bit of encouragement that this blanket of mineralisation is very widespread."