The Australian - Paterson Province remains underexplored despite its gold and copper riches13 Jun 2025 06:39
The Australian - Paterson Province remains underexplored despite its gold and copper riches
By Bevis Yeo
Paterson Province is a highly prospective region with big endowments of gold and copper
Antipa Minerals has defined a significant resource at its Minyari Dome project and plans a standalone development
Greatland Gold is looking to provide toll treatment services at its Telfer processing plant
The Paterson Province covers around 30,000km2 to the east of the Hamersley Basin and southwest of the Canning Basin and is one of the great mineral provinces in Australia, hosting some truly significant tier one projects such as Telfer and Nifty.
Telfer in particular has been a real drawcard with a stupendous pre-mining inventory of 32Moz of gold, a million tonnes of copper and about 25Moz of silver.
However, the region’s quirks – including a relatively thick layer of cover in many parts – meant that other than Telfer and Nifty, which were discovered between 1972 and 1985 due to outcropping mineralisation, it remained largely neglected since the mid 1980s.
Antipa Minerals (ASX:AZY) managing director Roger Mason told Stockhead the company started pegging ground in the region after realising that geophysical and geochemical surface exploration techniques had come a long way since the mid-80s.
“For example, electrical, geophysical survey techniques that they were using in the mid 80s would have been 1970s technology,” he noted.
“So there was an opportunity in the region to apply state of the art geophysical and surface geochemical techniques to see through the cover to discover new ore bodies. And basically that's what happened.”
This is clearly highlighted by the discovery of 20Moz of gold, nearly 4Mt of copper and about 60Moz of silver in the last eight years or so under cover as shallow as 10m and up to 430m at the major Havieron project.
Mason believes this trend will continue as the Paterson is a very immature province from an exploration perspective, saying that material re-invigoration of exploration has only occurred in the last decade or so.
“The giant deposits will continue to be discovered and then a number of smaller multi-million ounce, but tier two and tier three discoveries will be made over the next several decades,” he added.
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