Following the success of the Delamerian National Drilling Initiative (NDI), the Geological Survey of South Australia will once again partner with MinEx CRC to drill underexplored areas of the State.

In 2024 the GSSA will be focusing on the northern Gawler Craton. This area shares affinities with world class mineral provinces in South Australia and northern Australia but is currently lacking in fundamental geological information to underpin successful exploration.

This project aims to provide baseline geoscience and mineral potential insights to expand our knowledge and support future investment and understanding of the region.

Map showing NDI exploration areas

Drilling is scheduled to begin in late 2024 so be sure to sign up for the GSSA’s e-newsletter Cover to Core and follow LinkedIn to keep up to date with the latest project news.

Project diary

April 2024

This month we hosted back-to-back workshops for the Mineral Exploration Cooperative Research Centre (MinEx CRC) at the South Australia Drill Core Library. Both workshops formed part of the planning for the National Drilling Initiative (NDI) program. The NDI sits under MinEx CRC's Program 3, which focuses on creating new tested workflows for drilling and sampling through cover, and developing scientific methods to uncover hidden mineral potential within Australia, especially taking advantage of new low-cost Coiled Tubing (CT) drilling technology and associated sensing.

The first two-day workshop included setting priorities and goals for the final three years of MinEx CRC. Discussions revolved around new products and workflows already developed and how these can be implemented. Geological Survey organisations, university researchers and partner organisations (including Geoscience Australia and CSIRO), attended the hybrid workshop.

The second workshop was aimed more locally and involved planning for GSSA’s Northern Gawler NDI program in late 2024. This workshop brought together GSSA, MinEx CRC researchers and invited resource company representatives to review current research and discuss potential geoscientific investigations for the Northern Gawler NDI project. In-depth talks were offset by practical core viewing, making the most of the Core Library’s fantastic legacy drillholes and available core layout, and sampling for research purposes.

Viewing core at the NDI workshop