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Over 5,000 square kilometers of a world class mining district

THE PEAKE PROJECT

Overview

The Gawler Craton is a world-class mining district in South Australia and is endowed with over 100 million tonnes of copper and 110 million ounces of gold.

Copper Search’s Peake Project is made up of three areas and covers over 5,000 sq km giving the company a strong ground position in the district.

The Peake & Denison geological domain was recently recognised as equivalent to the copper-rich Cloncurry District in Queensland.

Project Overview

Since 2022, Copper Search has focused on refining and drill-testing the top five large-scale targets, narrowed down from an initial list of over 40 geophysical anomalies spread across our 5,000 km²  tenement package. This process has led the Copper Search team to concentrate on drill targets identified along the fertile Karari Shear Zone.

The Karari Shear Zone

The Karari Shear Zone (KSZ) is a long-lived deep-tapping fault that creates a permissive structural setting for forming IOCG-style mineral systems and is interpreted to be a conduit for mineralised fluids. Drill testing targets in and adjacent to the KSZ are the priority for the Company in the immediate future.


Positively, the cover is thin, only 67m in places, at the Paradise Dam Prospect, and the Cadnaowie Sandstone, which outcrops on the western side of KSZ due to its elevation, is a recharge zone for the Great Artesian Basin (GAB) aquifers. Drilling is, therefore, simpler and cheaper on the western side of the KSZ within the Company’s tenure. While the fertile KSZ remains prospective to the east, the cover deepens towards Lake Eyre to >700m, and the sandstone units forming the aquifer of the GAB become overlain with the bulldog shale and are pressurised, making drilling technically challenging and expensive.

The Company has carefully undertaken innovative passive seismic surveys, validated by drilling in 2023, to accurately predict depth to the basement and identify uplifted blocks that can give false gravity anomalies, to avoid drill testing false gravity anomalies.

The Douglas Creek IOCG Prospect

The Douglas Creek IOCG Prospect is a large-scale shallow classic IOCG style coincident magnetic and gravity anomaly of 1400nT (mag) and 1.9mGal (gravity) only recently cleared for drilling after two years of careful consultation with the Arabana, the traditional owners of the land on which the Peake Project is located.

The depth to the basement at Douglas Creek is 125m, with a target depth ranging from 300m to 750m. The prospect covers a 1400m x 800m footprint (surface projection) and is positioned on the Karari Shear Zone, which has known IOCG mineralisation with a similar geophysical signature to the east. The prospect is also near a near-miss drill hole, 23PK01, which reported maximum assays of 0.45% Cu and 5.35 g/t Au (over narrow intervals) in drilling during 2023.

In July 2024, Copper Search commenced drilling a vertical diamond core drill hole (24PK14) at this target. The hole was extended from the planned 600m to an eventual depth of 786m based on the inspection of the drill core. Following the encouraging interpretation of the drill core in the field, an unplanned third hole, drill hole 24PK14-B, was completed in August. This was done using directional drilling off the same drill pad as drill hole 24PK14. The hole was drilled to the northeast to test the prospective coincident gravity and magnetic anomaly modelled at 300m to 800m depth. This directional drilling technique saved time and avoided additional redrilling of cover sequences and casing costs.

Results of Drilling

In September the company released the first results which showed that drilling intersected brecciated and significantly altered mafic and metasedimentary rocks, which were highly magnetised and of sufficient density to account for the co-incident “gravity-magnetics” anomaly. Assays from the second hole were released in October and showed similar geology and results.

Copper mineralisation was nearly continuous throughout both holes, with grades up to 0.2% Cu recorded. Mineralisation was observed as native coppr (Cu), chalcopyrite (CuFeS2) and bornite (Cu5FeS4).

The overall prospectivity of the Douglas Creek Prospect remains open due to the extent of copper mineralisation and IOCG pathfinder elements found in both holes and the fact that Copper Search has only effectively tested one-third of the rock volume within the target’s footprint. As demonstrated in many other IOCG deposits (Carrapateena, Oak Dam, Prominent Hill), this type of orebody can be strongly zoned, with distinctly barren or very low-grade zones juxtaposed within 50m of high-grade ore. The Company intends to retain this promising target and seek partners or alternative funding options to advance the exploration at Douglas Creek.

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