South Australia Projects
Gawler Craton
Southern Gold Ltd - Targeting the Gawler Craton
The Southern Gold Ltd (SAU) group has interest in a number of exploration licences and exploration licence applications in one of the world's leading mineral provinces, the Gawler Craton in South Australia.
Southern Gold has increased its control of tenure on the Gawler Craton based on key geological models for mineralisation. Southern Gold’s strategy is to use the new concepts and modern technology to drive the portfolio towards success by creating a pipeline of continually improving exploration targets.
Sediments form extensive cover over the craton, leaving large ore bodies hidden and posing great challenges for the application of standard exploration techniques. The directorship and exploration team at Southern Gold have a great collective experience in the exploration of South Australia, giving us that necessary edge to find these ore bodies.
Olympic Dam Style Mineralisation
The Gawler Craton hosts the world class Olympic Dam copper-gold-uranium deposit which was discovered in 1974. The ore body occurs in an iron oxide hydrothermal breccia developed in a Hiltaba Suite granite (1592 Ma). Since then number of other similar prospects have also been recognised and more recently, Minotaur discovered an iron oxide hosted copper deposit at Prominent Hill. Exploration was spurred on again by the exciting drill intersections at the Carrapateena Prospect in 2005.
Southern Gold is also persuing the innovative idea that IOCGU deposits may also occur along the southwestern margin of the Gawler Range Volcanics. The Olympic Dam group of IOCGU’s stem from deep crustal structures on the northeastern side of the Gawler Range Volcanics and we believe that there may be other structures in the basement which parallel Olympic Dam’s northwesterly trend.
Structure Controlled Alteration with Gold and Base Metals
Structurally controlled Mesoproterozoic hydrothermal alteration systems form the gold and base metal (lead, zinc, silver) deposits typical of Tunkillia, Tarcoola, Meninnie Dam, Oak Dam and Weednanna. Whilst the iron oxide-copper-gold-uranium (I.O.C.G.U) style of mineralisation of the Gawler Craton is Southern Gold’s primary target, there are other styles of basement mineralisation which are only just being recognised for their potential by both explorers and government mappers.
Archaean Gold and Nickel
Dominion Mining’s Challenger Gold Mine was discovered in 1995 in the northwestern Archaean portion of the Gawler Craton. The collapse of the gold price in 1997 put a rapid halt on exploration and since the relatively recent commodities revival very few companies have recognised the gold producing potential of the ‘Christie Domain’. Southern Gold is one of the few companies with first hand experience in this terrain and we strongly believe that more mines will be discovered in there.
The Archean Harris Greenstone belt offers a geological setting similar to the greenstone belts of the Yilgarn in Western Australia. The Directors' believe the Harris Greenstone project offers simlar prospectivity for komatiite hosted nickel sulphide and related gold deposits. |
Challenger Area Project