What you are looking at here is sulphate crystals forming out of creek water flow. This sort of crystal formation is often only seen on the top of a car battery where the acid has been evaporating. In this case, this has lead to the naming and finding of a significant mineral resource called Sulphur Springs of zinc, copper and silver. As the orebody has been oxidised and weathered near surface, the water perculating through the hills flows out down this deeply incised creek/gorge and all the rocks are coated with this mostly white sulphate salts, though in places more pure sulphur is found (which is yellow in colour). This is how the deposit was located when in 1984 a geo H.Wilhelmij decided to investigate this encrustation and followed it up until it stopped and then sought an explanation for this.
As an aside, this deposit is yet to be mined though as the tiranny of distance, the ruggedness of the location and the fluctuations of comodity prices has left it a marginal deposit, though one day all the ducks will line up and this will be developed. More than 50km of drilling has been completed to get it to this stage though.
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