Advanced Australian lithium developer, Core Lithium (ASX: CXO), has identified a number of attractive gold targets and prospects within the Bynoe Pegmatite Field in the Northern Territory.
The most advanced prospect Golden Boulder has returned rock chips grading up to 15.85 g/t Au. The area was last drilled by Greenbushes Ltd in the late 1990’s which intersected 48m @ 0.34 g/t Au from surface.
Other significant leads from existing soil and rockchip sampling grids, including 608 ppb Au in soils at Booths.
Core says the area’s previous exploration datasets focussed on tin-tantalum-lithium and assay suite regularly excluded gold.
Nineteen other gold target zones are defined by sporadic rockchip and/or soil samples up to 11.4 g/t Au. A plethora of likely targets also exist beyond this, where documented quartz vein systems have not been assessed for gold, although anomalous indicator elements such as As, Sb and Bi were assayed. Many quartz vein systems in the Bynoe Field have not been tested at all.
Most gold prospects are spatially separated from pegmatite bodies, however, a temporal and genetic connection cannot be ruled out. Anecdotally, the gold grade in weathered pegmatite at the Hang Gong tantalum mine was estimated to be only 0.01 g/t, but gold regularly appeared in the concentrate tails.
Greenbushes historically reported gold in alluvial concentrates at Booths and Hang Gong drainages. It is possible that this gold was derived from later quartz veins adjacent to or within the pegmatite, which provided a favourable rheology contrast with surrounding metasediments.
Gold is not visibly apparent in metallurgical concentrates from Grants or BP33, however it has not been assessed geochemically as yet
However, in the context of these new findings, Core plans to undertake re-assays for gold of previously submitted samples and concentrates from the Finniss Lithium Project to investigate the significance of the gold potential of the Bynoe Pegmatite Field.
Numerous gold targets have now been generated and Core believes it is well positioned in terms of tenure, easy access, local expertise and gold prospectivity to consider the gold exploration potential at both the Bynoe and nearby Adelaide River Gold projects.
Whilst the recent review of exploration and geochemistry data has highlighted the significant gold potential of the Bynoe Pegmatite Field, Core remains absolutely focused on delivering Australia’s next lithium project by developing the Finniss Lithium Project near Darwin in the Northern Territory.
