| |
 
|
|
Maitland Channel Project, Western Australia
The Maitland Channel Project consists of one granted Exploration Licence, eight Exploration Licence applications and two Prospecting Licence applications located in the North Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia.
The Maitland Channel Project covers approximately 140 km of the Tertiary channel system. Outside of the Maitland Channel Project area, the same channel system hosts the Lake Maitland, Lake Way, Centipede and Yeelirrie calcrete-hosted uranium deposits.
The Maitland Channel Project tenure is spread over four areas:
 |
West Maitland – covers 15 km of palaeochannel including the un-drilled western extension of the Lake Maitland radiometric Uranium anomaly. Redport Limited’s Lake Maitland deposit is 13 km east of the project area. Drilling to the west of the Lake Maitland deposit by Mt Isa Mines and BP Minerals in the 1970’s intersected carnotite, the main source of uranium mineralisation in calcrete-hosted uranium deposits. |
|
Southeast Maitland – includes 24 km of the Maitland Palaeochannel approximately 46 km to the southeast of the Lake Maitland deposit. The project includes an un-drilled radiometric Uranium anomaly. |
|
Irwin – covers 47 km of the Maitland Palaeochannel flanking Lake Irwin, 130 km to the southeast of the Lake Maitland deposit. The Exploration Licence applications include un-drilled radiometric anomalies in an area analogous to the Lake Maitland deposit. |
|
Southeast Yeelirrie – 70 km down-channel from the large Yeelirrie deposit and contains 54 km of the same channel system. Broad spaced regolith sampling in this area by the GSWA returned a similar uranium level as that achieved by the GSWA’s closest sample (11 km) to the Yeelirrie deposit. The Southeast Yeelirrie tenements include undrilled radiometric anomalies. |
In the early 1970’s Lone Star Exploration NL (Lone Star) drill tested some ultramafic bodies encountering nickel and copper anomalism associated with several ultramafic sills or flows. The mineralisation that remains shows potential for nickel sulphide within the project area.
Paulsens South Project, Western Australia
The Paulsens South Project covers a combined area of 73 km2 flanking Nustar Mining Corporation Ltd’s (now called Intrepid Mines Limited) (NuStar) Paulsens Gold Mine in the Ashburton Mineral Field of Western Australia. According to Nustar’s public releases Paulsens June 2004 pre-mining combined Indicated and Inferred Resources at 4 g/t Au lower cut off were 1.4 Mt at 11.7 g/t for approximately 540,000oz Au, and the Probable Reserve was 1.2 Mt at 10.7 g/t for approximately 412,000 oz Au. The Paulsens mine has just commenced producing and is aiming for an average of 80,000 oz gold per annum.
The southern licence portion of the project, is located 4 km southwest of Nustar’s Paulsens Gold Mine and covers a similar stratigraphic and structural setting in which northwest trending folds are developed in a faulted package of Melrose Argillite (lower Fortescue Group) and gabbroic sills in the nose of the Wyloo Dome. Reconnaissance rock chip sampling of deformed quartz veins within the Highway Fault Zone shows the presence of oxidized sulphides. Many of the historic gold workings
(1930s) in the vicinity of Paulsens also included minor
amounts of copper.
The northern licence project area covers rocks younger than the Paulsens sequence, in particular the Duck Creek Dolomite which has been successfully prospected further to the northwest and southeast for Carlin-style gold mineralisation where exploration targets include Merlin, Electric Dingo and Ibex. There has not been any significant modern gold exploration within the area.
In the north, the project includes approximately 5 km strike extent of the Marra Mamba Iron Formation, Hamersley Group, which hosts large quantities of iron ore second only to the Brockman Formation. With declining Brockman ore resources, the Marra Mamba is regarded as the next generation of Australian iron ore and currently defined deposits include West Angelas (Robe), Silvergrass (Hamersley Iron), Hope Downs (Hancock Prospecting – Rio Tinto), and Mining Area C (BHP Billiton).
|
|
