Jack Hallberg mapped over 300 standard 1:25,000 sheets within the gold- and nickel-rich greenstone belts of the Yilgarn Craton between 1970 and 2006. Jack’s maps are renowned for their detail, the recording of historic workings, drill holes and grid lines, as well as his meticulous mapping methodology. The mapping was enhanced by petrographic descriptions (by the author), geochemical analyses, and, from 1986 onwards, magnetic susceptibility measurements. This work followed his PhD research on the mafi­c-ultramafi­c complexes south of Kalgoorlie, which coincided with the late 1960s ‘nickel-boom’, and his CSIRO research which covered a wide range of igneous rocks in the Yilgarn and Pilbara Blocks.  Jack has published over 50 scientifi­c papers and his contributions to geology and exploration (he has been directly involved in several gold discoveries) are widely acknowledged.

Jack’s ‘paper’ maps are now being compiled into seamless GIS datasets by Bill Hitch (Datamapping) who has been involved in geoscientifi­c cartography since the early 1970s. His background in cartography/GIS, surveying, exploration and prospecting blends well with the Hallberg Mapping.

The GIS datasets are produced from scans of the original 1:25,000 scale mapping (reprojected to MGA94), these are digitized on-screen at scales of ≤1:6,000 to honour the accuracy of the original mapping. Digitized objects, attribute data, and supporting digital data are compiled in Mapinfo as a seamless coverage, allowing the mapping to be viewed in its overall context and integrated with other datasets (geophysical, geochemical etc). The fi­nal product can be supplied in Mapinfo format or exported to other industry-standard GIS programs.

The GIS data is offered for sale as a full dataset or as a client defined (rectangular N-S) areas, all at a significant reduction to production costs.