Open Ground - Waratah - Does the Macquarie Arc extends this far north?

Waratah is a large, shallow, fully worked-up geophysical target in northern NSW whose core has never been drilled. A coincident, high-amplitude gravity high and magnetic complex — interpreted as a mafic (possibly ultramafic) intrusive–extrusive body — sits under just 150–200 m of cover, with depth solutions placing its top at roughly 104–207 m and 3D inversions carrying the body to at least 700 m depth. The most recent holder spent six years building a complete modern dataset over it — 2,507 line-km of 100 m-spaced aeromagnetics, gravity, 3D inversions, petrology, spectral logging — and defined five drill targets: two on the margin testing a gold model, three over the core testing a Ni–Cu–PGE model. Only the two margin holes were ever drilled. Both were barren, and on that result — plus a petrological question mark — the holder downgraded the entire play and let the licence expire. The three core targets were never collared.

That downgrade is an inference from two holes on the edge of the anomaly to a core no drill has ever touched. Testing that extrapolation is cheap, staged and binary. CAADIA Metls has applied for the ground as ELA7080, now advanced to the notice-of-proposed-decision stage — the assessment step immediately before grant — and has already begun the desktop work that gates any drilling. The complete three-hole kill-or-confirm programme is designed and costed at an indicative A$0.5–1.0M. Scale is expressed in dimensions, not tonnes: an ~89 km² application over a multi-kilometre anomaly complex of which drilling has tested only 36–55 m of fresh bedrock on one margin.

The miss, precisely

The only two holes ever drilled here — Waratah 2 and Waratah 3 in the former holder's own naming — were the margin gold targets. Together they penetrated 36–55 m of fresh bedrock against a body the inversions carry to at least 700 m. The three Ni–Cu–PGE targets over the high-susceptibility core of the gravity anomaly — Waratah 1, 4 and 5, designed and permitted by the previous holder — were never collared. The miss is positional: the core of the target has had no drill hole, and the previous holder's exit judgement was made without ever testing it. The first hole of the designed programme is that test.

The Counter Argument

A credible operator with a senior geological consultant drilled two of five targets and walked away. Both holes returned barren, altered andesite; the primary assays show nickel is silicate-hosted with no sulphide accumulation at the drilled margins; and Crawford's low-Zr petrology raises a fertility question that remains unresolved. The body sits under 150–200 m of cover, and the thesis rests on a single, untested core.

Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze?

The three Ni–Cu–PGE core targets over the gravity–magnetic high were never drilled — a one-in-100-year flood cut access in 2021, not a negative result — so the central thesis has never actually been tested. A large coincident gravity–magnetic anomaly and confirmed Ni-fertile mafic magma define a real target, and it can be tested cheaply: re-assay of the retained half-core, then three pre-collared holes to ~150–250 m. The downside is bounded and known; the upside is a district-scale Ni–Cu–PGE system no drill hole has yet touched.

What our own re-read of the operator's data found

The former holder assayed both drilled holes on a full four-acid multi-element suite plus a 30 g fire-assay platinum-group method, but reported publicly only that copper, gold and PGE were "low." Because the remaining value here is a nickel–copper–PGE one, CAADIA reduced the lodged ALS certificates to the elements that actually separate a magmatic-sulphide system — nickel, chromium, cobalt, sulphur and the platinum-group elements. This is a re-reading of the operator's own primary data, not new sampling; it neither adds nor removes any exploration result.

It returns a specific, two-sided result rather than a flat "barren":

Element	WARDH001 (Waratah 3)	WARDH002 (Waratah 2)
Cu (ppm)	57–343	32–157
Ni (ppm)	39–52 (flat)	34–286 (dolerite, 174.5–176 m)
Cr (ppm)	91–108	110–588
S (%)	≤ 0.01 (at detection)	≤ 0.12 (across the pyrite zone)
Pt / Pd (ppb)	Pt < 5; Pd 6–13	Pt < 5; Pd 5–18
Reading	barren, sulphur-poor margin	Ni-fertile silicate, no sulphide

The encouraging half: WARDH002's dolerite carries genuinely nickel-fertile mafic magma — up to 286 ppm Ni with 588 ppm Cr and 7–8% Mg — showing the complex contains the right kind of magma for a magmatic Ni–Cu–PGE system. The cautionary half: that nickel is not accompanied by sulphur. It rises and falls with chromium and magnesium, not with sulphur — i.e. it is hosted in silicates (olivine, pyroxene, chromite), not in sulphide — and across both holes every sampled interval sits one to three orders of magnitude below the sulphur content of accumulated magmatic sulphide.

Read together, the two margin holes describe a nickel-bearing but sulphide-absent mafic system at the edge of the anomaly. What is missing at the two drilled points is not fertile magma — it is the sulphide-concentration event, which in these systems is characteristically localised rather than pervasive, and which margin holes would not be expected to capture. That is precisely the discriminator the untested core is designed to test, and precisely why the Phase 1 holes carry down-hole electromagnetics: a barren dense body and a sulphide-bearing one separate on conductance, which gravity and magnetics alone cannot resolve.

Source Document Quotes

“Neither WARDH001 or WARDH002 intersected any mesothermal vein targets, or significant veining and/or mineralisation. However, WARDH001 did intersect a very small amount of native copper along a natural fracture at 158.7 m. It is unclear whether the Macquarie Arc extends this far north.”

Doug Menzies , 2022, : EL8720 Annual Report 2021–22, Part A (EL8720_202203_A_01), Section 5.3 Conclusions

Significance: The candid central question — the two holes were barren, yet a native-copper occurrence shows a mineralising system, and whether the fertile arc reaches this far north is still open. The key risk any follow-up must resolve.

“In the rock from WARDH001, these altered phenocrysts are strongly stretched and deformed into a moderate foliation, suggesting this sample comes from a significant fault zone.”

Dr Anthony J. Crawford, A & A Crawford Geological Research Consultants   |   Year: 2021

Report: Petrographic Report 18 (Appendix 2 to EL8720 Annual Report 2021–22; EL8720_202203_A_11)

Significance: Petrographic proof that WARDH001 hit a significant fault zone — exactly the structural host sought for mesothermal vein gold; the hole was in the right structure, if not the mineralised part of it.

“My preference is that the intense epidote alteration of these rocks reflects high water-rock ratio hydrothermal alteration along permeable faults through the volcanic package.”

Dr Anthony J. Crawford, A & A Crawford Geological Research Consultants   |   Year: 2021

Report: Petrographic Report 18 (Appendix 2 to EL8720 Annual Report 2021–22; EL8720_202203_A_11)

Significance: Confirms a real hydrothermal fluid-flow system operated along permeable faults — a live mineralising process, a positive vector even though the sampled interval was barren.

“A feature of the lavas from both WARDH001 and 002 is their notably low Zr contents compared to most other Macquarie Arc basalt/andesite lava units… Similar low-Zr basaltic to andesitic rocks are known only from the Phase 2 Upper Blayney Volcanics, Byng Volcanics and dykes in the Coombing Formation, all south of Orange in the Molong Volcanic Belt. The significance of this disjunct occurrence of distinctive, low-Zr basaltic to andesitic lavas remains to be understood.”

Dr Anthony J. Crawford, A & A Crawford Geological Research Consultants   |   Year: 2021 (also cited in 2024 Final Report)

Report: Petrographic Report 18 (EL8720_202203_A_11); cited in Final Report Executive Summary & Section 3.6

Significance: The drilled rocks are genuine Macquarie Arc-affinity volcanics correlating to a known fertile (Phase 2) belt — an arc-extension confirmation, with an explicitly unresolved question inviting further study.

“Two of five targets were drilled and intersected moderately chlorite altered pyroxene phyric andesite without significant hydrothermal alteration, quartz vein development, or sulphide mineralisation which might have indicated proximity to either target. As a result, the potential for these targets was downgraded and exploration licenses are to be relinquished.”

Name: ACGH / Inflection Resources; approved Doug Menzies   |   Year: 2024

Report: EL8720 Brewarrina East Final Report 2018–2024 (EL8720_2024_FI), Section 5 Conclusions

Significance: The former holder’s candid reason for walking away — crucially, the downgrade rests only on the two drilled gold-alteration holes, not on any test of the Ni–Cu core.

“Consequently, five drill hole sites were defined, with Waratah 2 and Waratah 3 designed to evaluate a small part of the alteration system and Waratah 1, Waratah 4, and Waratah 5 to evaluate its nickel copper potential.”

Name: Australian Consolidated Gold Holdings Pty Ltd (ACGH / Inflection Resources); geophysical interpretation by Douglas Haynes Discovery Pty Ltd; approved Doug Menzies   |   Year: 2024 (statement first made 2020)

Report: EL8720 Brewarrina East Final Report 2018–2024 (EL8720_2024_FI), Section 3.4

Significance: Of the five defined drill targets, the three dedicated Ni–Cu holes — Waratah 1, 4 and 5, sited over the core of the anomaly — were never drilled. The primary sulphide targets remain wholly untested.

“Targets 1,4 & 5 were planned (see Figure 3), however a 1 in 100 year flooding evident throughout NSW inhibited access and feasibility of drilling.”

Name: Australian Mining & Exploration Title Services (AMETS) for ACGH; approved Doug Menzies   |   Year: 2022

Report: EL8720 Annual Report 2021–22, Part A (EL8720_202203_A_01), Table 2 footnote

Significance: The core Ni–Cu targets were left undrilled for a logistical reason (flooding), not on geological grounds — the clearest evidence that the best targets were abandoned before being tested.

“…confirm the need to evaluate the complex for its nickel copper potential as well. On the Bouguer gravity residuals map (Figure 7) the complex is signalled by a prominent high amplitude high, an encouraging, and highly relevant signature.”

Name: ACGH / Inflection Resources; interpretation by Douglas Haynes Discovery Pty Ltd; approved Doug Menzies   |   Year: 2024 (statement first made 2020)

Report: EL8720 Brewarrina East Final Report 2018–2024 (EL8720_2024_FI), Section 3.4

Significance: The record’s own conclusion that the Ni–Cu potential still needs evaluating, tied to an “encouraging” gravity high — a direct, unresolved call to keep testing.

“Its regional scale high amplitude signature within the Bouguer gravity field (Figure 4), and tectonic and structural setting are regarded as signatures indicative of a major ore deposit setting.”

Name: Carl (C.G.) Swensson, VP Exploration, ACGH / Inflection Resources; interpretation by Douglas Haynes Discovery Pty Ltd   |   Year: 2020 (repeated in 2024 Final Report)

Report: EL8720 Second Annual Report (EL8720_202003_A_01), Section 2.1; repeated in Final Report Section 3.4

Significance: The single strongest prospectivity statement in the record — the coincident gravity/magnetic signature read as indicative of a major ore deposit setting.

“The inversions and the analysis of the short wavelength-low amplitude signatures within the aeromagnetic data also show that additional mesothermal vein-array-hosted gold plays likely exist near the SE margin of the inferred mafic (ultramafic) intrusive-extrusive complex, for example, in the vicinity of 523500E 6664200N, and near the NW margin, for example near 522900E and 6672400N; and for nickel-copper near 521100E and 6665400N in particular.”

Name: Carl (C.G.) Swensson, ACGH / Inflection Resources; interpretation by Douglas Haynes Discovery Pty Ltd   |   Year: 2020 (repeated in 2024 Final Report)

Report: EL8720 Second Annual Report (EL8720_202003_A_01), Section 2.1; repeated in Final Report Section 3.4

Significance: Names further untested gold and Ni–Cu plays with specific coordinates, beyond the original five holes — concrete evidence of remaining, mappable targets.

“It is recommended that the targets should be tested by pre-collared diamond drill holes to depths recommended from the 3D inversion modelling.”

Name: Carl (C.G.) Swensson, VP Exploration, ACGH / Inflection Resources   |   Year: 2019

Report: EL8720 First Annual Report (EL8720_201904_A_01), Section 2.4 Conclusions and Recommendations

Significance: The record’s original formal recommendation to drill — a direct “test these targets” statement that was only ever partially acted on.

“…the local structural setting of the complex is very favourable for occurrence of large mesothermal vein-array gold deposits of the style associated with mafic volcanic-cored antiforms (e.g. Stawell, Victoria) within meta-turbidite successions. In addition, the inferred setting has analogies with the Tethyan Orogen in China, and suggests that the inferred mafic (ultramafic) intrusive-extrusive complex may have potential for nickel-copper mineralisation as well.”

Name: Douglas Haynes, Douglas Haynes Discovery Pty Ltd (geological consultant to ACGH)   |   Year: 2019 (quoted in 2022 Part A drill rationale)

Report: EL8720 Annual Report 2021–22, Part A (EL8720_202203_A_01), Section 5.1.1

Significance: The expert dual-commodity thesis — Stawell-style gold plus Tethyan Ni–Cu — that underpins the whole target, in the consultant’s own words.

“The drill holes are estimated, from the forward modelling, to hit the top of their respective targets at depths ranging from 150 to 200m… These depths are considered robust.”

Name: Carl (C.G.) Swensson, ACGH / Inflection Resources; interpretation by Douglas Haynes Discovery Pty Ltd   |   Year: 2020 (repeated in 2024 Final Report)

Report: EL8720 Second Annual Report (EL8720_202003_A_01), Section 2.1; repeated in Final Report Section 3.4

Significance: The untested targets are shallow (150–200 m) and the depths “robust” — i.e. cheap and low-risk to drill, a practical argument for follow-up.

“The extensions of the Junee-Narromine Volcanic belt beneath post-mineralisation cover, as inferred from this data, are thought to be highly prospective, particularly in areas where post-mineralisation cover is <200 m thick.”

Name: ACGH / Inflection Resources; approved Doug Menzies   |   Year: 2023 (identical wording from 2019 onward)

Report: EL8720 Annual Report 2022–23, Part A, Section 4 Exploration Rationale

Significance: The foundational “highly prospective” statement, tied to the favourable thin-cover (<200 m) setting that makes the ground drill-accessible.

Exploration support

“Untested aeromagnetic targets will be evaluated in the next reporting period.”

Name: ACGH / Inflection Resources; approved Doug Menzies   |   Year: 2023

Report: EL8720 Annual Report 2022–23, Part B, Section 2 Proposed Future Work

Significance: As late as 2023 the former holder itself recorded that untested aeromagnetic targets remained and were worth evaluating — only the subsequent relinquishment stopped that work.

Exploration history

• 1986–98 — CRA Exploration (CRAE). Model: base and precious metals over six discrete magnetic anomalies (Discovery 2000 survey). Work: regional aeromagnetic targeting; no drilling on this ground. Departure: no further work after disappointing results on adjacent EL5089 — a diamond–diatreme programme, a different deposit model on a separate anomaly cluster ~35 km north.

• 2011 (3 months) — AusNiCo Ltd. Model: Doradilla-style nickel over an inferred ultramafic sequence. Work: desktop only — no field work. Departure: relinquished citing prohibitively high drilling costs indicated by difficult conditions met by earlier explorers to the west.

• 2018–24 — Australian Consolidated Gold Holdings / Inflection Resources (EL8720). Model: Stawell-style mesothermal gold plus Tethyan-style Ni–Cu–PGE; five drill targets defined. Work: 2,507 line-km of 100 m aeromagnetics (2018), gravity compilation, susceptibility / magnetic-vector / Euler inversions, five targets defined, activity approval obtained for all five holes, a NSW cooperative-drilling grant secured; drilled the two margin gold-alteration holes (WARDH001–002, 409.5 m, June 2021), with multi-element + PGE assays, petrology and spectral logging. Departure: both margin holes were barren, and petrology raised an unresolved question about the lavas; the holder downgraded the play on those results, spent its final three years on desktop work while directing expenditure to other titles, and let the licence expire at its six-year term (April 2024) — with the three core targets still undrilled.

Why the target is still available

Every exit is documented, and no exit drilled the core. CRAE left over a failed programme of a different deposit style on different ground. AusNiCo left over cost, without drilling a hole. The most recent holder left on results from the margin: two barren holes sited on the gold-alteration edge of the anomaly, plus a petrological question, from which it downgraded the whole play — including three Ni–Cu–PGE core targets it had designed, permitted, won grant co-funding for, and never drilled.

That is the opening: the downgrade was an inference from the margin to the core, and the core has never been tested. Two things make the inference cheap to challenge. CAADIA has now done the first — a re-read of the operator's own full multi-element data, which shows the complex carries genuinely Ni-fertile mafic magma but no sulphide at the two drilled margins (above). Two steps remain before a single new drill metre is spent: a fresh, modern Ni–Cu–PGE-focused re-assay of the retained core under full QAQC (the historical batches carried no certified reference standards, so analytical accuracy was never independently demonstrated), and an independent re-run of the open-file 3D inversion models to lock final collar positions. Both are desktop, and both gate the drill programme.

The grades — complete drilled maxima, and why they matter

Waratah's honest headline is that the numbers below are the complete maxima from all drilling — and they're barren. That is precisely why the ground was open, and why the case is geophysical rather than grade-based.

Result (GSNSW open-file)	Hole / depth	Why it matters
343 ppm Cu with 0.011 g/t Au over 2 m — the best assay ever returned	WARDH001, 189–191 m	Confirms the margin holes tested the gold-alteration edge of the complex, not the Ni–Cu–PGE core
156.5 ppm Cu maximum; 5% coarse euhedral pyrite logged	WARDH002, 185–188 m	Establishes a dense but sulphur-poor package at the margin — the conservative case the drill programme is designed to confirm or reject
286 ppm Ni / 588 ppm Cr in dolerite, with S ≤ 0.12%	WARDH002, 174.5–176 m	Ni-fertile mafic magma is present, but nickel tracks chromium and magnesium, not sulphur — silicate-hosted, no accumulated sulphide at the margin
Pt below detection (< 0.005 ppm); Pd low but detectable (~5–18 ppb)	Both holes	Assayed on the margin only, in batches run without certified reference standards — the retained core awaits a modern Ni–Cu–PGE-focused re-assay under full QAQC before any drilling
Trace native copper (0.01%) logged on fractures	WARDH001, ~159 m	A logged observation only — copper is present in the system, at trace level

Geological setting

Concealed early-to-mid Palaeozoic basement, interpreted as the north-western extension of the Junee–Narromine Volcanic Belt of the Macquarie Arc — the belt that hosts Cadia and Northparkes far to the south — beneath 150–200 m of soft cover on the Barwon River floodplain. The working interpretation is a large, fault-repeated, north-plunging antiform of Girilambone Group metasediment hosting a mafic (possibly ultramafic) intrusive–extrusive complex. Every element of that picture is inferred from magnetics and gravity: there is no outcrop, and no hole has passed 211 m depth.

The fertility question deserves to be stated in full, because it is the pivot of the whole play. Crawford's 2021 study examined eighteen rocks from six prospects across the former holder's northern, undercover program. Four of the six proved to be post-Macquarie-Arc or non-arc rocks unprospective for porphyry Cu–Au — a Mundadoo I-type granite (414.9 ± 5.9 Ma), Marra A-type Dulladerry Volcanics (382.9 ± 5.1 Ma), a tholeiitic Milmilands gabbro, and, at Foster, detrital-quartz-bearing sediments whose quartz content excludes a Macquarie Arc source altogether. Only two of the six — Trangie and Waratah — are genuine Macquarie-Arc-affiliated rocks. That cuts both ways, and we state it plainly. It confirms Waratah's drilled lavas are real arc-affinity volcanics — the ground is not misidentified, and it is one of only two prospects in the program that sit inside the arc at all. But it also places Waratah in a district where the arc, where present, is so far un-mineralised: the one arc-affiliated prospect that carried any sulphide (Trangie) returned only a narrow late carbonate–sulphide vein with chalcopyrite and minor sphalerite, not an ore-scale system. Layered on that is the unusually low zirconium of the Waratah lavas — a signature the petrographer himself said "remains to be understood." Whether the fertile arc extends this far north is therefore the central risk, and it is resolved by lithogeochemistry on existing core, not by argument.

The top three targets

1. Waratah 4 (hole WATDD001) — the priority test. The central core target, closest to the drilled margin, sited over the high-susceptibility core of the gravity high. Its hole delivers the first-ever test of the anomaly's core, with down-hole EM to distinguish a barren dense body from a sulphide-bearing one — the one answer four decades of exploration never bought.

2. Waratah 5 (WATDD002). The second core target on the same design basis; extends the test along the interpreted body and confirms whether any Phase 1 result repeats.

3. Waratah 1 (WATDD003). The third core target; completes coverage of the high-susceptibility zone so the programme ends with a definitive answer — confirm, or kill with confidence.

Data room (under NDA): technical synthesis v5.1, Phase 1 drill programme design, CAADIA's primary Ni–Cu–PGE re-examination of the drilled core, source register and figure set.

No JORC (2012) Mineral Resource, Ore Reserve or Exploration Target is declared or implied. Historical results are compiled from GSNSW open-file (DIGS) records, have not been verified by a Competent Person for public reporting, and are provided for context only. The mesothermal-gold (Stawell-style) and Ni–Cu–PGE (Tethyan-style) interpretations are working hypotheses under test; alternative interpretations of the geophysical data exist. Earn-in terms are indicative and non-binding, subject to contract, due diligence and grant of the Exploration Licence (ELA7080).