At a glance:
Location:
Central Queensland, Australia - about 30 km southeast of Biloela, with year-round 4WD access.
Ownership:
100%-owned by Jacaranda, across three granted exploration permits.
Size:
409 km² of consolidated ground.
History:
Copper first discovered here in 1869, with small-scale mining, averaging 6% copper, through the 1870s and 1930s.
Today:
A modern exploration project with more than 20 shallow copper-gold targets, more than six separate porphyry targets, and high-grade results at surface.
What is White Cockatoo?
White Cockatoo is a large, wholly owned copper-gold exploration project covering a cluster of prospects, including:
- Quartz Ridge,
- Great Blackall,
- Flanagan’s,
- Tea Tree,
- Cave Mountain,
- Old Kroombit, and
- Karita.
The Company believes the area is best understood not as a single deposit waiting to be found, but as a mineral district: a group of distinct mineral systems, each with its own centre, lying side by side within a single tenement package. Districts of this kind host major copper-gold mines elsewhere in the world.
The geology
Think of a porphyry system as a hot, mineral-rich engine buried underground. As fluids from that engine cooled and moved outward through the surrounding rock, different types of mineralisation formed at varying distances and depths: high-grade veins and breccias near the surface, “skarns” where the fluids reacted with chemically favourable host rocks, and the copper-gold porphyry itself at depth.
Work to date suggests White Cockatoo contains not one of these engines, but several. More than six separate porphyry targets have now been identified across the tenements, each with its own surrounding halo of shallower mineralisation. They sit at very different levels of confidence:
- Flanagan’s – Great Blackall – the best defined: magnetic and geochemical surveys, supported by 3D modelling, have outlined a buried intrusion more than 400 m below the surface, surrounded by vein and breccia copper-gold-silver mineralisation at Flanagan’s and Great Blackall. It has not yet been drill-tested at depth.
- Cave Mountain – a second interpreted centre: a similar combination of geophysical response and surface mineralisation points to an intrusion beneath Cave Mountain, on the same model as Flanagan’s–Great Blackall but at an earlier stage of definition.
- Old Kroombit – the outer ring of a system: the zinc-copper skarn and very high-grade copper and gold seen at surface are the kind of features that typically form around the edge of a porphyry centre, suggesting an intrusion sits below.
- Further centres identified: Quartz Ridge, Inverted Pig and Scoria show the surface mineralisation, alteration and geophysical character expected above a buried centre.
Around and between these centres sits the shallow inventory — more than 20 copper-gold targets, in two main styles:
- Vein and breccia copper-gold-silver: the most common style, and the source of most of the high-grade results at surface (Karita, Great Blackall, Flanagan’s, Quartz Ridge and others)
- Zinc-copper skarn: formed where mineralising fluids reacted with the host rocks (Tea Tree, Old Kroombit)
The project lies within an old, geologically active belt known as the New England Orogen, where repeated pulses of molten rock were pushed into the crust. The Company believes this repetition — several intrusions rather than one — explains why mineralisation is spread so widely across the 409 km² package, rather than clustering around a single point.
The practical consequence is that the Project offers multiple independent exploration opportunities across a series of interpreted porphyry centres. Results from any one centre are therefore not necessarily indicative of the prospectivity of the others. Importantly, none of the interpreted porphyry centres has yet been drill-tested, leaving multiple opportunities for discovery across the Project.
What exploration has found so far
The area has a long history of intermittent work spanning more than 150 years, carried out by 15+ companies, but modern, systematic exploration only began in earnest in 2022.
Highlights include:
- 2022 drilling at Flanagan’s: up to 6.0 g/t gold, 3.5% copper and 6.9 g/t silver.
- Rock-chip sampling across several prospects: up to 24% copper, 13.4 g/t gold and 912 g/t silver – pointing to a rich, widespread mineral system.
- Old Kroombit (2024): rock chips up to 42.1% copper and separately up to 19.9 g/t gold.
- Tea Tree: historical trenching returned 25 m at 1.3 g/t gold, 1.5% copper and 0.6% zinc.
- Karita: a newly recognised prospect with copper grades up to 6.7%, plus early signs of gallium: a critical mineral used in semiconductors and renewable energy.
- 3D modelling has identified a buried magnetic “intrusion” more than 200 m below Great Blackall and Flanagan’s. It remains undrilled, but it gave the Company a signature to search for — and that search is what has since turned up the other porphyry centres, including Cave Mountain, Inverted Pig and Scoria.
- A growing target inventory: systematic mapping, sampling and geophysics since 2022 have taken the project from a handful of known workings to more than 20 shallow copper-gold targets and more than six porphyry targets.
What makes it interesting:
- A large, 100%-owned land package with historical high-grade production already proven at surface.
- Not a single target but a pipeline – more than 20 shallow copper-gold targets and more than six porphyry targets – so the project is not dependent on any one result.
- Multiple, genuinely distinct styles of mineralisation – veins, breccias, skarns and porphyry – providing several independent chances of success.
- A clear, staged plan: keep generating results from the shallow, well-understood targets while systematically ranking the deeper porphyry centres against each other, so that drilling is directed at the strongest of them first.
- Location near other regional copper-gold projects, including Mt Cannindah (ASX: CAE) and the Mt Rawdon gold mine (ASX: EVN).
What's next
Jacaranda plans to:
- Extend and de-risk the shallow, already-established targets at Quartz Ridge, Karita, Tea Tree and Old Kroombit with more sampling, mapping and trenching.
- Bring the newer targets, including Inverted Pig and Scoria, up to the same level of definition as the more advanced prospects, and work through the remainder of the shallow target inventory.
- Run further geophysical surveys to sharpen drill targets at Flanagan’s, Great Blackall, Quartz Ridge and Cave Mountain, and to rank the porphyry centres against one another.
- Drill test the shallow zones, and drill the highest-ranked porphyry centres.
- If results support it, move toward formal resource estimation and metallurgical testing.
Important note
White Cockatoo is an early-stage exploration project. No formal (JORC) Mineral Resource is currently defined, and there is no guarantee that further exploration will result in one. The targets described above, including the porphyry centres, are conceptual: they are drawn from surface sampling, mapping and geophysical interpretation, and the quantity and grade of any mineralisation at depth is speculative. Rock-chip and trench results are selective by nature and are not necessarily representative of the mineralisation as a whole. This summary is for general information only; prospective investors should read the full Independent Geologist’s Report and the risk factors in the Company’s Prospectus before making any investment decision.
