New South Wales Projects
SOUTH COBAR POLYMETALLIC PROJECT
The South Cobar Project is located along the eastern margin of the Rast Trough at the southern end of the Cobar Basin. The project captures the northern and southern extensions of the Woorara fault, along strike from Eastern Metals’ (ASX: EMS) Brown’s Reef polymetallic deposit and the Achilles shear zone, hosting Australian Gold and Copper’s (ASX: AGC) Achilles 2 & 3 Prospects.
The most advanced Prospect at South Cobar is the Achilles 1 Cu-Au Prospect which was previously drilled by Western Plains Gold (WPG) in 2005. Drillhole DDH-A1-2 intersected a broad zone of intense hydrothermal alteration, with blebs of chalcopyrite and minor chalcocite, returning peak values of 0.33% Cu from 90m to 92m, within a 64m zone averaging 0.10% Cu, from 76m to 140m proximal to target. The second drill hole was abandoned at 184.1m and failed to reach basement.
SER has completed a follow-up 250-sample soil geochemical survey covering the Achilles 1 Prospect which revealed an 800m strike extent gold in soils anomaly, with a peak value of 17.4ppb Au. The anomaly lies along the Achilles shear where it is intersected by interpreted NW-trending fault structures and NE-trending magnetic lineaments. The anomaly is also associated with anomalous copper, lead, zinc and silver, as well as anomalous pathfinder chemistry, including arsenic, bismuth, molybdenum and tungsten, strongly suggesting the presence of a Cobar-style structurally controlled polymetallic copper-gold mineralising system.
In May 2024 Australian Gold & Copper (ASX:AGC) announced the first results from a nine-hole RC program for 1,461 metres at the Achilles 3 prospect, approximately 8km north of Achilles 1 on the Achilles shear. The assay results from A3RC030 which tested to the east and down dip of previously reported results from A3RC028 and A3RC020 included 5m @ 16.9g/t Au, 1,473g/t Ag & 15.0% Pb + Zn from 112m and 3m @ 19g/t Ag & 19.5% Pb+Zn from 139m within a mineralised 43m zone of 2.2g/t Au, 196g/t Ag* & 3.6% Pb + Zn from 99m. The zone reaches a maximum grade of 45.0g/t Au, at least 3,000g/t Ag and 38.8% Pb + Zn with the announcement available here.
This is a great result for AGC and bodes well for SER and the Achilles 1 prospect with plans underway to test the target in the coming year.
MUNDI COPPER-GOLD PROJECT
The Mundi Project is a large-area, conceptual greenfield exploration project spanning over 1300km2 of the Curnamona Province, located approximately 115km NNW of Broken Hill. The Curnamona Province is a known iron oxide copper-gold (IOCG) mineral province with the potential for other mineral systems, such as Broken Hill Type Pb-Zn-Ag. The Project area has no known basement outcrop and very limited previous exploration.
The Mundi Project area targets the shallowest portion of the Curnamona Conductor (CC), a crustal-scale conductivity anomaly that has strong similarities to MT conductivity anomalies that have been interpreted to be associated with IOCG mineralisation in South Australia’s Gawler Craton
In May 2024 SER announced results from successive MT surveys that were modelled by Professor Graham Heinson from the Electrical Earth Imaging Group at the University of Adelaide, a global leader in the use and interpretation of MT data for mineral exploration. The modelling revealed shows that the intense deep-rooted conductor that was modelled in initial survey separates into two discrete conductive anomalies at ~3km depth. The conductors persist to depths of <500m and potentially as shallow as 200m below surface, although the electrical response of shallower basement in the models is partially obscured by the effect of approximately 100m of conductive overburden.
Above: 200m, 500m, 700m and 1000m resistivity depth slices of the revised 3D MT conductivity model relative to the location of GSNSW interpreted Proterozoic and the location of the MT stations (Black dots the initial survey location and white dots marked A2 & B2 are infill survey locations).
The MT surveys successfully demonstrated that the crustal scale CC persists and extends to explorable and economically extractable depths within the Mundi project area. Two shallow conductive zones have been modelled from the MT data with peak modelled resistivities of <0.1 ohm.m, which are similar to values recorded for massive sulfide orebodies1
1 Best, M.E., 2015. Electromagnetic (EM) Methods; in Shear Wave Velocity Measurement Guidelines for Canadian Seismic Site Characterization in Soil and Rock, (ed.) J.A. Hunter and H.L. Crow; Geological Survey of Canada, Earth Science Sector, General Information Product 110 e, p. 170-180.
WEST KOONENBERRY COPPER-NICKEL PROJECT
The West Koonenberry Project covers 483.5km2 of unexplored ground that SER interprets as the western extension of the Koonenberry Cu-Ni belt. The project is located approximately 100km NE of Broken Hill and adjacent to our Mundi Project.
SER interprets the linear magnetic rocks within the project area to be analogous to the Mount Arrowsmith mafic sills of the Koonenberry belt to the east, which is a highly prospective belt for Cu-Ni rich massive sulphides. The Koonenberry belt has previously been explored by INCO/Vale and IGO and is currently being explored by S2 Resources [1] (ASX:S2R). SER is targeting the equivalent mafic host rocks on the eastern edge of the Curnamona block, rifted from the Koonenberry belt during the formation of the Bancannia Trough. The Koonenberry belt is interpreted to be analogous to the Pechenga Copper-Nickel camp in Russia.
The first stage of exploration will be to secure land access agreements to allow reconnaissance mapping and sampling of the exposed geology at the southern end of the project to delineate the prospective intrusions, whilst undertaking geophysical assessments of the existing datasets to determine what new geophysical data could be collected to better understand the project.
[1] S2 Resources (ASX: S2R) Announcement October 2023
GAREMA GOLD PROJECT
The Garema project covers a 20km long undercover extension of the Parkes Fault Zone, recognised as a major controlling structure for orogenic gold mineralisation associated with the Middle Devonian Tabberabberan Orogeny in NSW, and is associated with significant gold mineralisation along its ~150km exposed length, from Alkane’s (ASX:ALK) >2 Moz Au Tomingley gold project to the north to the extensive historical underground workings at Wheogo Mountain, approximately 30km WNW of Grenfell, for which production is unknown.
The area has seen little previous exploration, with the only significant on ground work being undertaken by Newcrest in the early 1990’s, with the shallow drilling of 13 RC holes, between 11m and 88m in depth which intersected very low-level gold mineralisation in the basement. The area is also covered by a open file high-resolution (100m line spacing, 45m sensor height) aeromagnetic dataset, which was flown in 2011.
SER has compiled and reinterpreted the existing available data (in particular the aeromagnetics) across the area and defined exploration targets for further detailed work. Landholder negotiations are currently underway in preparation for a soil geochemical survey later in 2024 using the Ultrafine+TM next gen soil techniques which has proven to be an effective tool to identify orogenic gold mineralisation. Priority targets will then be followed up through RC drilling.
