The pinnacles

The Pinnacles lead, zinc, silver, and gold deposit 10 kilometres from Broken Hill in far Western New South Wales is now wholly owned by Perilya Limited following Pinnacles Mining Pty Ltd being placed in liquidation in 2011.

The Pinnacles deposit is looked on by Perilya Limited as having development potential as an open pit mining operation that will be able to be integrated into its other Broken Hill mining operations.
The mineralised rock currently identified has a 300 metres down dip over a 400 metre strike and further drilling is still being undertaken. There has been little exploration carried out at depths deeper than 100 metres in the past despite it showing promise of being one of the strongest alteration systems discovered that is separated from the main Broken Hill deposit. Altogether there is a five kilometre strike that makes up the Pinnacles ore body. Other exploration targets being undertaken in the area includes the Monarch Flat, the 1130 and the Sam Deeds deposits.

Perilya acquired the Broken Hill Mine in 2002, a mine regarded as being one of the largest silver, zinc and lead mines in the world that had already produced more than 200 million tonnes of ore over the last 127 years of its history, which began in 1885. It is the mine that witnessed the birth of the great BHP (Broken Hill Propriety) mining company, now global mining company BHP Billiton. Perilya purchased the Broken Hill Mine from Pasminco Limited. This acquisition allowed Perilya to become one of Australia's major mining companies.

Perilya Limited have tenements extending over 1,042 square kilometres of prime prospecting land surrounding Broken Hill that includes the Pinnacles deposit. The Pinnacles ore body will play a key role in the future success of the Broken Hill mining operations. The Broken Hill ore body itself being the biggest base metal ore body in the entire world. Perilya plans to extent the life of its operations by replacing mined ore with the extending of its ore reserves.

The Pinnacles have the appearance of being old extinct volcano's but are in fact intensely folded mountains of quartz and magnetite, two elements that are highly resistant to weathering hence the taking on of large hills rising out of the surrounding flat land surrounding them. One point that is not so well known because most people identify Coober Pedy in South Australia as the site where the Mad Max 2 movie was played out, is that the 'Fort' in Mad Max 2 was actually filmed at the north eastern flank of the Pinnacle.

The main ore body at the Pinnacles consists of two distinct lenses. Major metals of interest, particularly silver, is found near the surface with a central lead lode, galena being found at deeper levels, zinc being located on the steeply dipping lode and zinc and copper on the footwall.

Mining began at the Pinnacles in 1884 when two prospectors, Pretty and Maiden, pegged mining leases seven and eight. In 1885 the Pinnacles Silver Mining Company started production, four months before BHP was floated as a public company.