Olympic Dam deposit — geophysical case history

The Olympic Dam deposit with a resource of 2000 ´ 106 tonnes averaging 1.6% copper, 600 ppm uranium oxide and 0.6 ppm gold, is located 520 kilometres north?north-west of Adelaide, the capital of South Australia (Fig. 1). The deposit occurs in sedimentary breccias in a basement graben structure beneath 330 metres of flat lying Proterozoic and early Cambrian stable shelf sediments. It was located in 1975 by Western Mining Corporation by the drilling of coincident magnetic, gravity and tectonic targets identified on the basis of a conceptual geological model.