An area straddling the Tarcoola - Alice Springs Railway line next to the SA/NT state border, ~40 km south-southeast of Kulgera, was taken up to explore for possible buried economic magmatic Ni-Cu-PGE deposits, epithermal gold and Broken Hill type...
An area straddling the Tarcoola - Alice Springs Railway line next to the SA/NT state border, ~40 km south-southeast of Kulgera, was taken up to explore for possible buried economic magmatic Ni-Cu-PGE deposits, epithermal gold and Broken Hill type copper-lead-zinc mineralisation that may have formed in the Proterozoic basement rocks of the eastern Musgrave Province. The licensee Woomera Exploration Limited (WEX) planned to identify potential Giles Complex ultrabasic intrusive bodies from the existing geophysical data, and then to conduct soil geochemical sampling over them. It also intended to re-sample areas where Ni-Cu bedrock mineralisation occurrences had been reported from recent drilling done by the SA Department of Mines. During the initial licence year, WEX conducted a desktop review of reports about previous exploration activities and Government research studies. During licence Year 2, no work was done. Instead the licensee pursued investment opportunities in the resources sector. In line with this strategy, in December 2014 it acquired Norsa Exploration Pty Ltd (Norsa) and that company's licence portfolio in South Australia. In February 2015, WEX completed a technical review of its new combined tenement holdings and partially relinquished or fully surrendered ~50% of the initially granted ground area, leaving nine ELs and two ELAs in force. During licence Year 3, WEX reported that it had identified twelve exploration targets within the four ELs comprising its Alcurra Project, six of which lie within the subject EL 5042. Targets had been selected primarily on the basis of past RC drillhole sample assay results, past rock chip sample assay results and inferred magnetic trends. Because the local bedrock has highly variable magnetic signatures, primarily due to the remanent magnetisation components of the mafic/ultramafic intrusive bodies, a Vector Residual Magnetic Intensity (VRMI) filter was applied to the past airborne survey TMI data in an attempt to compensate for the remanence and identify places where true changes to apparent magnetic susceptibility exist over significant areas. During licence Year 4, no work was done. WEX negotiated a Heads of Agreement with OZ Exploration Pty Ltd (OZE), whereby OZE could earn up to 75% interest in the Alcurra Project tenements by spending $7.5 million on exploring them. A 3850 m exploratory RC drilling programme was proposed by the joint venture partners to test selected geophysical anomalies; this was to begin once a Native Title Mining Agreement had been executed and other legislative compliance requirements satisfied. During licence Year 5, a Native Title Mining Agreement was negotiated with the Tjayuwara-Unmuru Aboriginal Corporation (TUAC), and subsequently an Aboriginal heritage protection work area clearance survey was conducted during June 2018 with members of the TUAC Board of Directors. Across the project ground, six of the seven priority target areas were cleared to allow ground geophysical surveying and RC drilling to proceed, but Area 6 on Norsa's Mount Irwin EL 5287 was not cleared due to cultural concerns. During licence Year 6, on WEX's renewed EL 6092, parts of a ground-based moving loop electromagnetic (MLEM) survey were conducted in August-September 2018, along 28 survey lines totalling ~55 line km that crossed the Cavanagh, O'Mahoney, Healy and Gallagher magnetic anomalies. In all, 323 stations were read at 200 m intervals closing down to 100 m and 50 m intervals. Pronounced IP effects were observed in the in-loop EM readings, which gave the survey contractor cause for concern about those data, and consequently Slingram readings were also taken at all of the stations. Some strong conductors were able to be defined by plate modelling of the Slingram EM data. A campaign of RC exploratory drilling was conducted in November 2018, mainly on EL 6092, with 6 inclined holes for 1680 m completed on the Healy and Gallagher geochemical anomalies. Preliminary in-field pXRF spectrochemical analyses were performed on the drill cuttings taken at 1-metre hole depth intervals. *Exploration on the tenement was suspended at the end of the year.**
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