Ground encompassing the Palaeoproterozoic basement Weekeroo Inlier of the Olary district, which includes the historic Walparuta copper-gold mine located approximately 20 km north of Manna Hill township, was taken out to search for possible economic Cloncurry style copper-gold mineralisation and for buried Broken Hill type lead-zinc-silver deposits. Early work consisted of a review of past exploration records, and a gap analysis performed by consultant geologist Lindsay Curtis, followed by specific field reconnaissance of the stratigraphic and structural setting of existing geochemical anomalies and of known mineralisation occurrences. This activity led to the formulation of a revised structural model for the complex high grade metamorphic rocks seen in the eastern Weekeroo area, which had the potential to unravel many of the current stratigraphic interpretation enigmas of the Olary Domain as a whole. The model demonstrated three non-coaxial Olarian fold phases, and invoked a simplified stratigraphic scheme for the studied area. Felsic volcanic beds were identified as a major component of the lower Willyama Group strata. In view of the importance attached to this work, the licensees consented to it being made public by MESA at the second Broken Hill Exploration Initiative conference held in Broken Hill from 26-28 May 1997 [cf. MESA Journal 6, p:18]. As follow-up to a preliminary aeromagnetic data interpretation and colour aerial photograph interpretation, 1:25,000 scale geological mapping and rock chip sampling of target horizons (628 samples) was commenced. A 6 square km region of the Dead Horse Syncline was defined which was thought to conceal prospective buried Bimba Formation that could be the source of numerous previously observed weak gold anomalies. New anomalous rock chip sampling results were returned from other areas lying away from known mineralisation, e.g. at Copper Ridge (Cu to 1.35%, Au to 1.8 g/t) and in the Dead Horse Syncline along strike from the Walparuta mine (Zn to 0.7%, Pb to 0.5%). The rock chip assay results obtained at the Walparuta prospect suggested that copper-gold mineralisation there is more extensive than indicated by the old workings, while the four drillholes completed by previous explorers did not test the related magnetic anomalies. In an attempt to define drillable targets, orientation and grid-based Mobile Metal Ion soil sampling (1064 samples) next ensued, plus further geological mapping and rock magnetic susceptibility measurements to aid the magnetic data interpretation. At the favoured Walparuta prospect, detailed grid-based soil sampling (271 samples) plus additional rock chip sampling (131 samples) yielded spot gold values of up to 42 g/t (although the average value actually lay closer to 3 ppm Au), with an associated copper content of around 2-3%. When Silver City Mining took over operating the licence, various ore milling and cyanide leach regimes were experimented with to determine the Walparuta orebody's potential for commercial extraction. Complementary trials of a similar nature were undertaken on another 69 rock samples taken from lodes at the abandoned Big Barytes and North Weekeroo workings, but it was found that these latter deposits did not respond well to metallurgical processing, whereas the Walparuta samples' leach trials, run as bottle rolls at 30% solids, reported a consistent 100% recovery of the fire assay gold grade after 24 hours. It appeared that the Walparuta ore gold metal particles are in a very finely dispersed state within the copper sulphide minerals. Subsequent leach trials demonstrated that gold recovery by cyanidation could equal fire assay grade in an agitated leach of only 2 hours duration, with a cyanide consumption of less than 1 kg per tonne of ore. Assayed rock samples from the Walparuta mine were also sent for flotation testing at the Ian Wark Research Institute of UniSA, where utilisation of the latest innovative such techniques showed substantial improvements in gold recovery over conventional methods. From the licensees' viewpoint, this route was regarded as a more financially viable one to follow than that of trying to gain an increase in remaining ore reserves at the mine.