Legacy Minerals has begun a diamond drilling programme at the Emu Copper-Gold Prospect, part of its Mt Carrington Project in northern New South Wales (NSW), Australia.

This programme consists of up to eight drill-holes totalling 4,000m across five drill pad sites.

The drill-holes are estimated to reach depths of up to 500m and are focused on the Emu Porphyry Core and Emu Alteration Halo SE targets.

These zones were identified as discrete exploration targets following an airborne mobile magnetotellurics (Mobile MT) geophysical survey, which interpreted them as possible porphyry-style intrusive bodies and silicified alteration halos within the caldera.

Drilling activities are expected to continue over the next three months, with the possibility of follow-up work afterwards.

Copper remains the main focus of exploration at Emu, where historical mining took place at the Emu Creek copper mine and mineralisation has been documented throughout the area.

The company highlights that the large areas of copper potential within the project have not yet been tested, pointing to previous drilling at the Mt Carrington Prospect with reported intervals such as 18.9m at 5.8% copper and 10.1m at 7.26% copper.

The Emu Prospect lies approximately 8km north of Drake, NSW, within exploration licence 6273 and forms part of a regional caldera-margin trend.

Alongside the nearby Mascotte and Battery prospects, Emu is among three high-priority regional targets defined by recent geophysical surveys within the Mt Carrington project area.

As drilling proceeds at Emu, Legacy Minerals plans to release results as assay data is obtained and will combine this information with existing geological, geochemical and geophysical datasets to improve exploration targeting.

Legacy Minerals CEO and managing director Christopher Byrne said: “The commencement of drilling at Emu marks the first modern drill test of a compelling copper-gold porphyry-epithermal target that has not seen a drill rig in 50 years.

“Emu sits on the same caldera margin trend that hosts the existing 1.2moz AuEq (115moz AgEq) Mt Carrington Mineral Resource, and our team has integrated historical geological data with the recent airborne Mobile MT geophysics to define two distinct targets, the Emu Porphyry Core and the Emu Alteration Halo SE.”

Earlier this month, the company signed a binding earn-in and farm-in agreement with Peak Gold Mines, a fully owned subsidiary of Aurelia Metals, regarding its Cobar Project in NSW.