Mount Isa project exploration permit map with location maps inset showing Mount Isa, Cloncurry and Julia Creek, in addition to Ernest Henry (E.H.) Mine and Tick Hill Mine.

The project offers exploration opportunities for large iron-oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) and Broken Hill type (BHT) or Cannington-style Pb-Zn-Ag deposits in the Eastern Succession of the Mount Isa Block. The area is entirely under cover (estimated thickness 250 m to 400 m) and virtually unexplored.

In 2019, SXG subsidiary Mawson Queensland flew 100 m spaced airborne magnetics and completed a 1 km x 1 km ground-based gravity over its entire Mount Isa SE tenements. This program was partly funded in part by a $100,000 grant from the Qld Government Collaborative Exploration Initiative. This work defined gravity and/or magnetic targets which included the multi-point definition of the priority F11 target.

In July 2020, Mawson Queensland received $200,000 funding for the F11 drill program under the Queensland Government’s Collaborative Exploration Initiative (CEI). Mawson Queensland subsequently completed its first, and only, drill hole (MQDDH001) to 849.7 m with basement rocks intersected at 318 m.

The lower part of the drill hole below 750 m contains most of the sulphides of interest, in particular pyrrhotite-rich zones with veinlets and disseminated chalcopyrite hosted by potassic-altered meta sediments and mafic rocks. It is within these zones that the anomalous copper (up to 8,660 ppm Cu 0.3 m) occurs.  

The increase in copper and associated elements lower in the drill hole and the strong correlation with the emplacement and sulphidic alteration is an encouraging sign for development of further mineralisation in the area. Texturally late sulphide enrichment and/or mobilisation is a feature of mineralisation styles in the Eastern Succession, largely driven by fluids derived from the Williams-Naraku igneous suite. Magnetic susceptibility data were collected on MQDDH001 diamond drill core in April 2021 but have not adequately provided a source of the deeper magnetic target.

At Mt Isa, SXG has ranked seven high priority coincident gravity and magnetic targets from the recently acquired ground and airborne surveys.