Taruga starts new copper drilling at South Australia project

Taruga Minerals has kicked off a maiden drilling program at Morgan’s Creek in South Australia where it recently found high-grade copper in rock chips collected over a wide area overlaying gravity and magnetic anomalies. The company has about 2,000m of reverse circulation drilling planned across a 45 square kilometre “megabreccia” seeing the drill bit for the first time.

RC drilling targets include gravity and magnetic anomalies, copper in soil anomalies and historical artisanal workings. Taruga is also aiming at the key regional structures it has drilled recently elsewhere at its 400sq.km Mt Craig copper project on the state’s mineral-rich Adelaide Geosyncline.

It says the heavily altered megabreccia containing large mafic intrusive bodies and outcropping copper mineralisation and magnetite at Morgan’s Creek produced large copper-soils anomalies with up to 600ppm copper over a 6sq.km area.

Rocks chips collected from the broad-spaced soils returned up to 14.5 per cent copper, 0.1g/t gold, 2 g/t silver and 127ppm cobalt.

The drill rig now turning at Morgan’s Creek recently completed an expanded 4,000m RC program at Wyacca, with lab results expected early in August.

Previous drilling at Wyacca in the north of Taruga’s Mt Craig tenement block intercepted 5m going at 2.4 per cent copper from 17m, including 1m grading 9.5 per cent from 18m and 11m at 1.5 per cent from 85m including 4m grading 2.7 per cent copper from 85m.

Taruga has follow-up diamond drilling planned for Wyacca.

The company’s CEO Thomas Line recently said the 45sq.km Morgan’s Creek area had historical copper workings nestled amongst volcanic and carbonate breccias. Sampling highlighted “high-order copper-soils anomalies … coincident with mapped structures which cross-cut the dominant Worrumba Anticline”.

The anticline feature spans the entire 34km of strike at Mt Craig.

That’s also the distance between the Wyacca high-grade copper find and Morgan’s Creek to the south.

Taruga’s ground is in South Australia iron-oxide, copper and gold, or “IOCG” elephant country – the G2 structural corridor in the Adelaide Geosyncline hosting more than 800 historical copper mines or workings and a bunch of polymetallic mines operated since the 1840s.

The modern IOCG mine showcase features BHP’s monster Olympic Dam copper-gold-uranium-silver operation and other giants such as OZ Minerals’ Carrapateena and Prominent Hill.

Copper-gold associations are common within the Adelaide Geosyncline, Taruga management notes, yet many of the old copper mining ventures did not recognise the presence of gold.

Also striking is the relatively limited exploration and development that has gone on in the region over more than a century – notwithstanding the signature discoveries that have stamped the Gawler Craton as a world-class mineral province – due to its extensive bedrock cover and remoteness.

Taruga, which had more than $4 million in the bank at the end of March this year, is well-funded to pursue aggressive exploration on the back of significant copper-gold results reported to date from Wyacca, Birthday Gift and Morgan’s Creek.

The regional discovery almanac might show that company-making discoveries are rare. However, Coda Minerals’ recent Elizabeth Creek IOCG discovery between Carrapateena and BHP’s exciting Oak Dam West find and Coda’s subsequent 400 per cent share price spike underscore the prize in front of Taruga.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@wanews.com.au