Project Summary

The Lake Cargelligo Project is located 190km south-southeast of Cobar in central New South Wales and consists of a single Exploration Licence Application (ELA 6815) covering 287km². Tenure was applied for Group 1 Minerals for an initial 6-year term with grant anticipated in early 2025.

The project falls within the Cobar District with a long history of mining and several significant Au-polymetallic deposits. More recent discoveries south of Cobar include Peel Mining Ltd (Mallee Bull, Wirlong, Wagga Tank – Southern Night), Aurelia Metals Ltd (Federation), and Australian Gold and Copper (Achillies 3). Application of geophysical methods is revitalising exploration in the Southern Cobar District with numerous listed and private exploration companies successfully reassessing historical prospects.

A wide variety of mineralisation styles occur throughout the Cobar region including VMS, epithermal, orogenic, and intrusion-related systems. At Lake Cargelligo, use of the Thermal Aureole Gold (TAG) model is considered pertinent to guide Au-focussed exploration within contact metamorphic zones surrounding granite intrusions.

Regional Setting

The Central Lachlan Fold Belt (CLFB) contains a sequence of Ordovician-Silurian back-arc sediments intruded by significant volumes of predominantly S-type Silurian and Early Devonian granite and granodiorite Intrusions.

Numerous Au deposits and occurrences within the CLFB are spatially related to these granitoid bodies, their contact aureoles, and associated regional structures, with this geological setting is considered analogous to the North American Tintina Province of the Yukon Territory and Alaska (e.g. Pogo, Fort Knox and Donlin Creek).

Regional residual gravity data indicates that the CLFB is underlain by large gravity lows representing deep batholithic roots. Dominant gravity gradients strike north-northwest aligning to the regional structural architecture, with secondary northeast and northwest structural orientations. Regionally, Au enrichment often coincides with intersection of these features.

Lake Cargelligo lies to the south of the 50km by 70km sized Erimeran Granite batholith, with sediment-hosted Au deposits – Mineral Hill, Overflow, Federation, Hera, Nymagee, and Mallee Bull – distributed around the granite margins. A large-scale fault zone, the Yalgogrin Fault, trends southeast through the Erimeran Granite and locally at the Lake Cargelligo Project forms the prospective contact between Ordovician sedimentary lithologies and the Silurian Ungarie Granite.

Project Details

Exploration within ELA 6815 is focused on the southeast portion of the tenement along an 18km section of the Yalgogrin Fault where the Ungarie Granite intrudes the Ordovician Abercrombie Fm. and Currawalla Shale units. Aside from several defined prospects, basement outcrop is limited with much of the area overlain by thin (est. <30m) Quaternary cover.

The prospective north-south orientated igneous-sedimentary contact is dislocated by northeast-southwest trending structures along the fault zone with strongly mineralised, ferruginous quartz veining-stockworking occurring at the Josephine Moulder, Josephine Moulder East, and Mount Wilga prospects. Where host lithologies outcrop, the highly faulted sedimentary rocks show degrees of contact metamorphism.

The Josephine Moulder – Mount Wilga area hosts the strongest surface Au-Ag mineralisation with two historically worked north-south trending zones of intense quartz veining-stockwork-breccia outcropping over 400m and 300m respectively that range up to 18m wide (Josephine Moulder and Josephine Moulder East), and an isolated mine shaft 750m to the southeast (Mount Wilga).

A subtle magnetic trend is evident over c. 2.75km in regional-scale data that coincides with Josephine Moulder and correlates with rock chip and auger multielement anomalism at Josephine Moulder North. This feature, the Josephine Moulder Fault, remains open both north and south beyond historical geochemical sampling and represents a priority, large-scale anomaly to assess for drillable TAG-style targets.

Mineralised structures show strong, pervasive silicification with abundant, fine, cross-cutting quartz veins, stockwork, and stringers indicating they were formed by a multiphase hydrothermal system, with historical channel and grab rock chip samples reporting strong grades:

Historical drilling at Josephine Moulder and Josephine Moulder East is limited to five open hole percussion holes by Aberfoyle (1982) and three diamond holes by Carpentaria (2014).

All seven holes drilled at Josephine Moulder intersected wide zones of low-grade Au-Ag mineralisation downdip of the mineralised outcrop with additional anomalous footwall zones. Below the base of oxidation, the lode consisted of pyrite-quartz-carbonate veining-brecciation with variable degrees of sphalerite, galena, chalcopyrite, and arsenopyrite. True width is estimated at 12m. Notably, diamond drilling by Carpentaria returned grades 2-3 times those of Aberfoyle’s percussion drilling, indicating the older drilling underestimated metal grade.

Future exploration to be considered at Lake Cargelligo includes extensional soil sampling, airborne magnetic-radiometric and induced polarisation surveying, and reverse circulation and diamond drilling.

Sunbird Resources is eager to rapidly progress the Lake Cargelligo Project and is seeking expressions of interest from potential partners to assist advancing this exciting project.