METAGEO Geology · Data · Insight

Mines and Wines 2026

The Core Shack

Five deposits, five trays, at the Geological Survey of NSW booth — booths 20 and 21, Exhibit Room B. Each tray has a card with a QR code, and each code lands on one of these pages.

The five deposits

Deposit type and commodity are given. Hole IDs and assays are not — that is the whole point of the competition.

Bowdens Silver

Intermediate sulfidation epithermal

A silver system that never quite reached the surface — and that is exactly why it is still here.

AgZnPbAu

Taronga tin deposit

Granite Sn-(W) vein

A granite's parting gift, and a drill record that captures a commodity crash in real time.

SnCuAg

Avoca Tank (Tritton Operations)

Girilambone-type Cu

Copper that has been folded, cooked and moved — and the real challenge is the dirt on top of it.

Cu

Hera

Polymetallic Zn-Pb skarn

In the Cobar Basin, orebodies go down rather than out — and this one is a good argument for it.

AuCuZnPbAg

Big Hill (Broken Hill Cobalt Project)

Stratiform cobaltiferous pyrite

The cobalt here is invisible, because it is hiding inside somebody else's crystal lattice.

Co

Grade guessing competition

Have a crack at this tray

Running across both days at the Geological Survey of NSW booth — booths 20 and 21, Exhibit Room B.

  1. Look at the core. Prospect and deposit type are on the card; hole ID and assays are not, on purpose.
  2. Write your estimate on an entry slip at the booth. There is a category per commodity.
  3. Entries are open day 1 and day 2.
  4. GSNSW hold the assays until the prize presentation on day 2. A bottle of wine per category, supplied by the conference committee.

What is on this page, and what is not. Drillhole names are masked and shown as sequential identifiers. There are no assay results here, and no map coordinates — collar positions are plotted on a local grid in metres from the deposit centre, rounded to 5 m. That is deliberate: the competition only works if nobody can look up the answer from their phone while standing at the tray.

Everything else — deposit type, commodity, mineralogy, alteration, drilling history — is open-file information published by the Geological Survey of NSW.

Deposit, drillhole and mineral occurrence data supplied by the Geological Survey of NSW (MinView export, 21 August 2026), reproduced with permission. Sponsorship of the Core Shack at Mines and Wines 2026 is held by MetaGeo.