The states of Western Australia and Victoria, Australia, are recognized as two of the richest gold producing regions in the world.
One might think that after centuries of exploration and exploitation, miners would have already uncovered most of the gold that could be found on the island continent. However, that is not the case.
Not only have a range of new discoveries been made in the past few months, more excitingly, explorers have unveiled new gold plays in both states, providing the promise for plenty more gold to be found in years to come.
Stavely identifies new gold and silver play in Victoria
Stavely Minerals Limited (ASX: SVY) unveiled plans in late May to accelerate its exploration activities at its flagship Stavely Copper-Gold Project in western Victoria on the back of identifying, what it says is a new style of gold-silver mineralisation system.
The new carbonate-base metal-gold breccia-hosted system was highlighted in initial assays from drilling at the approximately two km long S41 prospect at Stavely.
Planning is currently being undertaken for a programme of additional air-core drilling to further define the geochemical zonation of the S41 breccia pipe. Further additional diamond drilling is also in being discussed.
The S41 prospect was identified by an extensive review of regional and near-resource discovery opportunities conducted by Stavely Minerals last year.
However, executive chair and managing director, Chris Cairns, said the results have been an unexpected revelation.
“Carbonate-base metal-gold systems are amongst the most prolific styles of gold mineralization in the South West Pacific,” said Cairns. “Importantly, the breccia-hosted systems have the potential for scale as they can be large, multi-phase systems.”
“What I like about what I see at the S41 breccia system is that it exhibits the six components required for a well-developed carbonate-base metal-gold mineral system.”
Drilling Success a New Catalyst
Catalyst Metals Limited (ASX: CYL) recently obtained more ‘exceptional’ assay results in early June from drilling at the Iris Zone, which is considered to be a new play within its Four Eagles Gold Project in Bendigo, Victoria.
The latest assays show drilling intersected gold in a further seven holes at the Iris Zone. This takes the total number of holes reporting gold to 14 and extends the strike length of the known mineralization from 350m to 500m.
The Iris Zone sits approximately 150m below the shallow mineralization at Boyd’s Dam, within a near-vertical shear zone striking almost north south, and containing abundant quartz, often laminated with arsenopyrite and native gold.
“The Iris Zone is proving to be a very strong structure with quartz veining up to 8m thick and often showing visible gold. It now extends over a strike length of about 500m with potential to the north and south,” technical director, Bruce Kay, said.
“It is exciting to see so many intersections with values greater than 50g/t Au, indicating that high-grade underground mining should be possible.”
Sunday Creek Success
Southern Cross Gold Ltd (ASX: SXG) believes it has made a world class discovery with continuing strong results from its 100%-owned Sunday Creek Project in Victoria.
Managing director Michael Hudson said the company has hit multiple high-grade intercepts in the deepest hole at the eastern end of the prospect area. Hole SDDSC066 provided the third best hit on the project to date consisting of 10.4m @ 22.4g/t Au Eq, amongst multiple other high grades over a downhole length of 312m.
“SDDSC066 is the 250m to 300m depth extension of SDDSC033 that also intersected a wide mineralized footprint with high grade components (including 119.2m @ 3.9g/t Au Eq). These holes demonstrate Sunday Creek’s regularity of high-grades veins, scale, and continuity of mineralization,” said Hudson.
“Continuous results will be released for the remainder of this year, as we continue to de-risk the Sunday Creek project, which in my view is one of the most exciting and high-grade gold discoveries globally, given the frequency of high-grade hits.”
Lefroy Excited by New WA Gold Play
Lefroy Exploration (ASX: LEX) has released a maiden mineral resource estimate (MRE) and some very promising results at the Burns Central discovery south-east of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.
Big gold (0.5Moz) and copper (58,000t) hits as well as additional silver, cobalt, and molybdenum were made in what the company thinks is just the tip of the iceberg.
Mineralization is hosted within multiple alkalic porphyry units and basalt dated to 2.6B years (Archaean age). The company considers this style of mineralization to be atypical of the Eastern Goldfields and potentially a first-of- its-kind discovery in WA.
“The delivery of the maiden Burns Central MRE demonstrates the existence of a substantial resource at the wholly owned Burns Gold-Copper Project,” managing director, Wade Johnson, said.
“This has been achieved in just two years since LEX’s exploration commenced at Burns Central in January 2021. Our MRE coincides with gold prices nearing record levels and future demand for copper skyrocketing, making the value of this gold, copper, and silver resource considerable in current and projected market terms.”
“The newly discovered Archaean porphyry gold-copper style of mineralization at Burns Central is ground-breaking for the Eastern Goldfields. What we’ve found at Burns Central has laid the foundation for the potential discovery of similar deposits near Burns and possibly throughout the entire Kalgoorlie Terrane.”
“We believe the gold-copper mineralization discovered at Burns Central represents only the initial indication of a system of greater magnitude with huge potential for both lateral and depth extensions.”
“Additional upsides of the MRE on Lefroy’s unique porphyry discovery are the success of producers with large mineral resources on the project’s doorstep, and significant growth opportunities to expand the resource and to explore the multiple additional gold-copper targets along the immediate 2.5km Burns Corridor.”
“Preliminary indications from the geochemistry and aeromagnetic data point to further mineralization at the Neon prospect in the north-west and Burns intrusion in the west, which could extend mineralization laterally, and along strike by at least 6km, and allow it to grow into a significant, new mineral district.”
Hemi continues to shine
DeGrey Mining’s spectacular new gold play discovery at Hemi in Western Australia’s Pilbara region in 2019 continues to excite.
Numerous explorers continue to pour money into the area as they look to undercover further riches in this significant gold play.
Now part of DeGrey’s 100% owned Mallina Gold Project, the large scale, high value, near surface, Hemi gold discovery is now being fast-tracked to commercialization.
The Hemi discovery is an intrusion-hosted form of gold mineralization new to the Pilbara region and shows a scale of mineralization not previously encountered in the Mallina Basin. Gold mineralization at Hemi is hosted in a series of intrusions associated with stringer and disseminated sulphide rich zones.
The high value of the discovery is driven by its size, grade continuity, and growth potential. Hemi has a mineral estimate of 8.5Moz and the potential to be mined by large scale, low strip ratio, low-cost open pit mining.
An extensive drilling programme combining air-core, reverse circulation (RC), and diamond drilling has been undertaken to test the extent of the deposit and infill, in support of a high-quality MRE of 8.5Moz at Hemi, as released to the market on 31 May 2022.
