Gold explorers seek the next Challenger in the Gawler Craton

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Marmota has rolled out 31,000m of drilling this year, chasing the next Challenger in South Australia's reemerging Gawler Craton gold ... Read More The post Gold explorers seek the…

The next Challenger? SA explorers are on the lookout for the Gawler's next great gold find. Pic: Getty Images

The chase for the next Challenger is well and truly on in South Australia’s Gawler Craton as the company which acquired the historic asset looks to bring it back to life in a higher gold price environment.

Located in the remote climes of the central Gawler Craton, Dominion Mining made the Challenger discovery in 1995, 750km north-northwest of Adelaide.

Named after founding geologist Dave Edgecombe’s dog, it took three years to drill the project out and four years of studies and permitting, before an open pit was mined from 2002, transitioning to underground operations in 2004.

By the end of 2014, under the ownership of Dominion Gold and then Kingsgate Consolidated (ASX:KCN), the project had delivered more than 1Moz.

Uncovered by sampling calcrete anomalies at surface, the deposit opened up an entirely new gold district.

The original mine shut in 2018 as WPG Resources, its eventual owner, fell into administration.

Revived in the IPO boom of 2021 under the umbrella of Barton Gold (ASX:BGD), a surge in gold prices and emerging scale among the region’s resources could see the Central Gawler again become a gold hotspot.

Barton’s point of difference was to pair the Challenger mill, mothballed with a capacity of 600,000tpa, with the larger Tunkillia and another asset called Tarcoola, South Australia’s top gold producing field in the first half of the 20th century.

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