WEST WYALONG PROJECT
Central New South Wales
The Company applied for an exploration licence (ELA 3712) to explore for gold in the Central NSW. The approval for grant of a licence has been given and the agreement for the licence has been signed by the Company and is awaiting NSW Department of Mining and Petroleum to sign. The Gilmore Suture in NSW is a locus for numerous gold deposits, ranging from quartz vein in sediments style to porphyry gold deposits. The close association with granite intrusive indicates that these deposits in domain are likely to belong to the intrusion related gold deposits class.
The Company is targeting the Intrusion Related Gold (IRG), a concept which was pushed by junior explorers in Alaska and Yukon in the 1990’s to give an enhanced sense of coherency and prospectivity to widely spread recognized mineralisation in the region. It was recognized that gold occurred in a series of discrete districts and belts and that gold deposits formed at different points in the tectono-magmatic evolution of a collisional orogen.
Gold deposits of the IRG class manifest themselves in a range of styles and types related to depth of exposure and primary regional rock types that include:
• Shear-zone hosted “orogenic lode” style deposits
• Intrusion-related gold with diverse mineralisation styles
• Epithermal gold.
It has also been recognized that major mineralisation centres are often widely separated and as a consequence there is a need initially to examine the prospectivity of a large region to define the most productive centres.
The formal or published “definition” of this class of gold deposit is relatively recent and exploration for them as a
discrete class has only been undertaken over about the last 15 years world wide. By analogy with North American IRG provinces, such settings have potential for large tonnage bulk mineable gold deposits (eg Pogo, Fort Knox, Donlin Creek etc).
The Central Lachlan Fold Belt was chosen for exploration for IRG deposits on the basis of its similar tectonic setting, intrusive history and metallogenic association (gold-tintungsten-molybdenum-arsenic-bismuth). In comparison with the East Lachlan Fold Belt, the tin - tungsten belt target in the Central Lachlan has only had limited modern systematic exploration appropriate for discovery of the IRG class of deposit. Much of the previous exploration has been focussed on tin and tungsten exploration, not gold, a feature also notable in the Tintina
Gold Province.
Exploration for gold has essentially been limited to the immediate site of known old workings withlittle consideration given to the wider geological setting that hosts them. In the Central Lachlan a number of potential target sites are weathered to some depth and covered with a veneer of soil or recent transported regolith that limits bedrock exposure and reduces the effectiveness of much early geochemical exploration. Consequently assessment requires modern,low detection level, multi-element geochemical exploration strategies and modern high resolution geophysics to effectively explore the tenement area under shallow cover or deep weathering.
The particular target area is shown on the map in Figure 14 below
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