Exploration of an area lying west of Lake Gilles concentrated initially on assessing its potential for hosting syngenetic Palaeoproterozoic stratiform base metal deposits along perceived stratigraphic extensions of the beds containing the recently found Menninnie Dam deposit, which is situated approximately 18 km beyond the northern boundary of the subject EL 1702. Banded iron formation units within the Hutchison Group were considered to be attractive indicators of likely Broken Hill or Aggeneys - Gamsberg type massive sulphide - forming geological environments. Limited rock chip sampling and the processing of aeromagnetic and Landsat TM images were undertaken first. The aeromagnetics revealed a number of weakly defined linear trends possibly associated with BIF strata. However, rock chip sampling of outcrop over these trends gave geochemical results that were not encouraging. Further image processing of aeromagnetic data down to 1:50,000 scale was then done, to assist with a newly adopted exploration approach to regional target definition utilising surface geochemical surveys, the effectiveness of which had been demonstrated at the newly discovered Telephone Dam prospect in the Wilcherry Hill JV's adjoining EL 1464/1825. Just-completed drilling at Telephone Dam, plus ongoing studies of the nearby Menninnie Dam deposit, had shown that there the Pb-Zn sulphides appeared to be epigenetic, occupying discontinuous zones within large hydrothermal systems that conceivably could hold much better potential for discovering economic Au-Cu deposits. Accordingly, the EL 1702 prospectivity study was re-aligned to develop the new model, using all available data to produce a structural synthesis that would guide a major programme of soil geochemistry aimed at detecting both base metal and gold anomalism within the area's geomorphological setting. 400 m x 400 m grid soil sampling at two target sites (766 samples) for analysis of a broad suite of elements yielded several anomalies, including three significant low-level gold anomalies of up to 10 times regional background. Following renewal of the licence as EL 2175 and a change of operator from Aberfoyle Resources to Acacia Resources, a regolith geological interpretation was completed over the entire licence area which disclosed pervasive calcareous soils and calcrete deemed useful as a geochemical sampling medium. Therefore 500 m x 500 m spot calcrete sampling was also performed over the entire licence area, which again yielded several anomalous gold results, this time in clusters ranging from 8 to 13 ppb. Subsequent infill calcrete sampling at these sites on 200 m x 200 m centres (239 samples variously at Jiggy's Corner, Moora and Burrows Dam), however, failed to return coherent confirmatory anomalies of > 8 ppb, instead giving several scattered anomalies (best result 15 ppb at Moora) that required further infill calcrete sampling to be resolved. The only such further infill sampling was done at Jiggy's Corner (232 samples at 200 m x 200 m spacing) in 1999, but it returned no significant gold or base metal results. Elsewhere, 6 rock chip samples were collected from Muratchina Hill over quartz veining with fracture fill sulphides. Again no anomalous gold or base metals were detected. Thereafter, work on this licence area was stopped until the end of the record period in 2002, owing to the joint venture partners concentrating their exploration efforts on higher priority ground elsewhere within the central and southern Gawler Craton.