EL 4177, made up of three disjoint parts, is located on the central-western side of Yorke Peninsula near the towns of Port Victoria, Maitland and Arthurton, and covers a total area of 243 square km. The underlying basement rocks there are part of the Moonta tectonic subdomain, and lie close to the Torrens Hinge Zone that defines the eastern margin of the Gawler Craton. Stratigraphically they belong to the Wallaroo Group, a thick Palaeoproterozoic volcanosedimentary sequence deposited in an intracratonic basinal setting. These old rocks have been intruded by the Tickera and Arthurton Granites, which were emplaced during the period 1600-1575 Ma as part of the Mesoproterozoic Hiltaba Suite intrusive event. Core Exploration ('Core') farmed into EL 4177 to look for possible buried large-scale deposits of iron oxide - associated copper-gold (IOCG) mineralisation equivalent to Rex Minerals' 2009 Hillside discovery on the eastern side of Yorke Peninsula near Ardrossan. This is a magnetite-dominated IOCG deposit with a current inferred resource of 217 Mt @ 0.7% Cu, 0.2g/t Au and 12.4% Fe. It is thought that the Hiltaba age geothermal event is the most likely source of fluids that have formed the economically significant mineralisation in the region, which also includes the major Moonta-Wallaroo historic copper mining field. Initial exploration undertaken by Core on EL 4177 comprised the acquisition of helicopter-borne aeromagnetic surveys over all three portions of the tenement, plus ground gravity surveys read at 500 m × 500 m station spacing, and reconnaissance soil geochemical sampling. A south-west trending structural corridor, interpreted as being a splay off the Pine Point Fault, was identified within the southernmost portion of the tenement, which was further investigated by ground magnetic surveying. A number of coincident magnetic and gravity anomalies were identified lying within this corridor, and these were next drill tested using aircore equipment, to try to sample the first few metres of the basement. Unfortunately, the ~150 m depth of cover was far greater than expected, and its makeup caused drilling difficulties which meant that over the majority of targets the aircore drilling rig was unable to penetrate to basement. True basement was reached in only 6 of the 41 attempted aircore drillholes. Prior to proceeding with more expensive diamond drilling, Core decided to attempt to directly detect IOCG mineralisation beneath the cover using an airborne electromagnetic (AEM) survey. The company successfully applied for a SA Government grant of $50,000 made available through the PACE 2020 Targeting mineral exploration subsidisation module, to help defray the cost of running this survey. On 2nd December 2011 contractor Geotech Airborne flew 327 line km with its Versatile Time Domain Electromagnetic (VTEM) helicopter-borne survey instrumentation platform across the entire southernmost portion of EL 4177, along 62 east-west lines spaced 200 m apart, maintaining a 49 m mean terrain clearance of the VTEM transmitter/receiver loop configuration. Subsequent interpretation of the AEM data revealed a lack of obvious anomalism and pervasive effects due to highly conductive cover which overall served to mask any basement-sourced late-time EM responses. Two minor north-south trending AEM anomalies were noted on the composite Tau map, that might possibly represent good basement conductors, but were not considered significant enough to constitute drill targets. It is believed that they probably reflect saline groundwater which has infiltrated weathered basement along faults, since neither anomaly has an associated magnetic and/or gravity feature.