A junior explorer has showed its ongoing geological faith in Western Australia’s Eastern Goldfields by doubling its land holding in the region. In doing so, it has highlighted that this prospective region remains a destination of choice for the Australian exploration sector.
In late April, Greatland Gold announced it had been granted a new exploration licence (Mount Smith) covering 555 square kilometres at its Ernest Giles project.
Located around 250km north east of Laverton, Ernest Giles covers a folded belt of magnetic greenstone rocks typical of the high gold and nickel endowment found in the area.
The licence covers more than 50km of strike length of what the company called a highly prospective Yilgarn Craton Archean greenstone belt with very limited previous exploration. This more than doubled the previous accessible strike length.
Geologically, the junior said, the complexity of the structure on the Mount Smith tenement, combined with favourable lithologies, made it ideal for the formation of structurally-controlled orebodies as seen throughout the Eastern Goldfields.
According to Greatland Gold, the exploration licence (EL) has historically very limited on-ground exploration, with only four RC holes drilled throughout the entire 555 square kilometre area.
Three of these were logged as not reaching bedrock and therefore not testing the target, while the depth of cover in the one effective hole was logged as 369 metres. No significant bedrock mineralisation was identified.
The highly magnetic interpreted banded iron formation sediments (BIF) within the Mount Smith boundaries wrapped into a crustal scale fault on the eastern side of the tenement.
This unit was also disrupted by a large fault on the tenement’s western edge. Further disruption and structural complexity displayed in the tenure, including potential isoclinal folding and/ or thrust faulting, had resulted in repetition of the BIFs.
The Eastern Goldfields hosts some of Australia’s large gold camps such as Kalgoorlie, Leonora, Laverton, Mt Magnet and Jundee.
The prospective greenstone sequence at Ernest Giles does not outcrop and, as a consequence, is underexplored relative to the remainder of the rest of the region.
Within the Eastern Goldfields, the average spacing of deposits with total endowment of over one million gold ounces (or over 100 kilotonnes of nickel) is around 26km.
The strike length available to Greatland Gold to explore prior to this release was 40km of the total 130km covered by its leases and applications. With the grant of Mount Smith, this available strike length increased to 90km.
The intended 2024 work program for the EL is to carry out on-ground reconnaissance to confirm access and assess cover depth, improve the geophysical interpretation by focusing on identifying likely dilational areas and fluid pathways, as well as working with a geophysical consultant to plan and carry out a geophysical survey to best confirm these targets prior to drilling.
“Our intent is to commence a substantial drilling program on the Meadows prospect at Ernest Giles in the second half of this year,” Greater Gold managing director Shaun Day said.
The company has already established a presence in the region via its Bromus project, located about 20km south west of Norseman.
Bromus consists of two wholly-owned exploration licences – Bromus and Bromus West, both of which are considered prospective for nickel and gold.
These tenements cover about 16km of strike of a north-west trending under-explored Archaean greenstone belt situated between the Goodia granite dome to the east and granite gneisses to the west.
The apparent width of the greenstone belt ranges between 600m and 3,500m, while the greenstone sequence comprises fragments of an ultramafic package hosted in mafic and felsic volcanics and sediments with very little magnetic character other than the ultramafic body located towards the south east of the project area.
Furthermore, the majority of this land is covered by calcareous soils with little exposure to the underlying prospective ultramafics and greenstones.
Carnavale Resources, another junior, recently acquired 80 per cent of the high grade Kookynie gold project, which sits 60km south of Leonora and 150km north of Kalgoorlie-Boulder.
Kookynie covers about 50 square kilometres comprising two exploration licences and three prospecting ones. Earlier this year, Carnavale said it had received “excellen results” from its March aircore drilling program as it followed up on geochemical and structural targets.
The company completed a program of 72 holes for 4,192m that returned a number of significant results under alluvial cover.
According to Carnavale, the drilling confirmed the continued prospectivity of the major shear structure at Kookynie for over two kilometres within the tenement package.
This work was focused on following up low order gold anomalies with associated bismuth, tungsten and tellurium as identified in previous sampling.
It also identified a new zone, Valiant, which has a 250m strike length and remains open, as well as expanding the Tiptoe prospect by 200m in a north-north west direction.
A maiden mineral resource estimate and mining study for Swiftsure and McTavish East are imminent. “This aircore exploration program has successfully extended the mineralisation envelope from the new zone Valiant, south of McTavish East, to the north west of Tiptoe, providing further targets for RC drilling and the potential to increase overall resources at Kookynie,” Carnavale chief executive Humphrey Hale said.
“Numerous first class anomalies remain to be tested at Kookynie, which will be followed up in further programs.”
