Breaker Resources Embarks on Golden Safari
THE CONFERENCE CALLER: Words like “predictable” and “repetitive” are not usually uttered by junior explorers as they seek funds to look for gorillas in elephant country. By Mark Fraser
But language like this does appear in market releases from time to time, particularly if an exploration house is looking for something with the right geological recipe, but comes with low risk.
During the December 2020 quarter Breaker Resources executive chairman Tom Sanders used both terms while describing the outcome of a field campaign at the company’s wholly-owned Lake Roe gold project 100 kilometres east of Kalgoorlie-Boulder in Western Australia.
Sanders was referring to new mineralisation Breaker identified via diamond and RC infill drilling below the evolving Bombora open pit ore body, which is just part of a 9km long gold system with an established resource of 23.2 million tonnes at 1.3 grams per tonne gold for 981,000 contained ounces.
This drilling provided Breaker with more firm evidence that Bombora enjoys significant scale, high-grades, continuity of mineralisation and predictable geometry and returned some healthy gold intercepts, including: 9.15 metres at 7g/t from 558.85m (including 2m at 26.15g/t) and 3.68m at 10.58g/t from 607m (with 2.88m at 13.03g/t) from the northern section of the deposit.
In the central part a new steep lode 800m below surface was discovered yielding the deepest intercept to date of: 2.64m at 11.7g/t from 933.08m, including 1.92m at 14.03g/t.
The numbers here will form part of a global resource update planned for April 2021 to incorporate the Bombora, Kopai-Crescent and Claypan areas.
Regular updates are then planned as infill drilling is completed on structures such as the Tura lode.
Sanders said the latest results established the continuity of high-grade mineralisation over a 2km length directly below the existing 1Moz resource.
“They also show that the continuity and geometry of the mineralisation at Bombora is typical of the Archean deposits seen in WA’s Eastern Goldfields,” he noted.
“The lodes are predictable and repetitive and directly comparable to many well-known mines including the Golden Mile deposit.
“This augurs extremely well for the resource update we are planning for April 2021.
“The increasing predictability of structure is helping to identify a lot of new drilling targets.
“For example, we plan to trace some of the big flat structures we are seeing at Kopai-Crescent, Claypan and Bombora eastwards into the magnetite-rich contact of the syenite.
“These are lighting up geochemically in our aircore drilling over a 12km distance.
“We also have a lot of targets identified by aircore drilling over 30km of strike that don’t yet have an RC drill hole.”
Lake Roe comprises five granted tenements and one application covering an overall greenfields area of 556sqkm.
Aside from its close proximity to Kalgoorlie-Boulder, it also sits just 60km south-south east of the operating 3.5Moz Carosue Dam gold mine and 35km north of the historic 900,000 ounce Karonie yellow metal deposit.
Wide-spaced reconnaissance drilling has delineated a large-scale gold anomaly over 8km of strike that includes Bombora, which now extends over a continuous strike length of 3.2km and remains open in all directions.
Following the discovery of Bombora in 2015, Breaker – which listed on the ASX in 2012 with the objective of applying modern, systematic exploration techniques to the largely under-explored Eastern Goldfields superterrane of WA – completed 250,000m of RC and diamond drilling to establish a 1Moz open pit resource and create an extensively de-risked development option in a single pit configuration.
This deposit is a typical Archean, multi-lode gold ore body hosted by dolerite.
It has yielded some of the best drill hits in the state over the past few years , including 17m at 15.85g/t, 7m at 61.78g/t and 32m at 15.31g/t.
Resource drilling started in late 2016 and a maiden resource of 11.9Mt at 1.6g/t gold for 624,000oz contained gold was announced in April 2018.
In September 2019 an upgraded resource of 23.2Mt at 1.3g/t gold for 981,000 oz of contained gold was announced. The company has also released an exploration target of 1.2-1.4Moz at a grade of 4.5-5.5g/t gold over and above the estimated resource.
According to broker Bell Potter, since the start of material step-out drilling in 2020 the company has identified three large areas of discovery targeted for ongoing resource growth and confirmed the project’s underground mining potential.
Importantly, the pattern of drilling and consistent discovery established each quarter over a five-year period bears all the hallmarks of a new gold camp, while regional drilling indicates scope for a 30km long gold system.
Email: breaker@breakerresources.com.au
Web: www.breakerresources.com.au