Location and area

The Wilcherry-Weednanna Gold and Iron Project covers approximately 4716 hectares, partly located within Exploration Licence (EL) 6188 in the Wilcherry Hill area, approximately 45 km north of Kimba, 310 km north west of Adelaide, on the Eyre Peninsula of South Australia.

Company

Alliance (Eyre) Pty Ltd is a privately owned company and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Alliance Resources.

Resource

Gold (Au), Iron ore, Silver (Ag) and Copper (Cu)

The deposit

In November 2020 the gold and iron mineral resources for the Weednanna Gold-Iron Deposit was updated. The deposit is estimated to contain 1,106,000 tonnes grading 4.3 g/t gold for 152,000 ounces of gold and 1,150,000 tonnes grading 59.4 % iron. The dimensions of the Mineral Resource area are 1,300 m (north-south), 600 m (east-west) and from surface to a maximum depth of 220m.

Mining Operation

The project involves the development of a gold and iron ore mining operation.

Accessing the gold and iron ore is to involve a combination of open cut and underground mining. The gold will be crushed, milled, and processed on site, with doré gold (gold bars that have been produced on site) transported from site in armoured vehicles. The iron ore is magnetite and will be crushed and screened on site generating a direct shipping (DSO) quality ore which will be transported to customers or an export port.

Mining operations are proposed to extract approximately 200,000 tonnes per annum (tpa) of gold bearing ore (and up to a total of 956,000 tonnes over five years) to produce 79,833 ounces of gold ore, 793,000 tonnes of iron ore at 58.6% iron and 21 million tonnes of low grade and waste over a 5-year period. The life of the project is proposed to be six years (including 1 year for construction).

The primary proposed components of the project are:

  • Two open pits comprising the West Pit (gold only) and the East Pit (gold and iron ore)
  • Underground gold mining operation
  • Associated material stockpiles and waste rock facility
  • Iron ore processing plant and services
  • Gold processing plant, including tailings storage facility, reagent storage and services
  • Power plant
  • Mine access road (already constructed)
  • Water supply wellfield (already constructed), pipeline and water storages
  • Mine administration office, workshop, ablutions and crib room.

Status

A Program for Environment Protection and Rehabilitation has not been submitted.

Approval process

In January 2022 Alliance (Eyre) Pty Ltd (Alliance) submitted an application for a mining lease over a portion of exploration licence (EL) 6188 supported by a mining proposal to the Department for Energy and Mining (DEM).

The application was made available for public comment on 27 September 2023, with comments to be to be submitted by 26 October 2023. One (1) submission was received from a member of the public. DEM also received a submission from the District Council of Kimba.

DEM reviewed the submissions along with technical input from several South Australian government Departments including, but not limited to, the Department for Environment and Water, South Australian Arid Lands Landscape Board, the Environment Protection Authority and the Outback Communities Authority.

DEM determined that additional information was required to enable assessment of the application, and a request for a response document was prepared. The applicant was required to formally respond to all matters and requests for further information raised by the public and the South Australian Government.

The applicant submitted their response document on 3 December 2024. This response document, along with the public submission, and the original Mining Proposal have been published on this website (see below).

On 21 August 2025, mineral lease (ML) 6565 was granted.

Current documents

Mining proposal

Public submission received

Response Documents

Public Assessment Report

Tenement document

More information

Contact the Mining Regulation Branch, Department for Energy and Mining via email: DEM.MiningRegRehab@sa.gov.au