Navarre strikes high-grade gold at Tandarra
THE DRILL SERGEANT: Navarre Minerals has hit a further high-grade drill intercept on the Tomorrow line of quartz reef at the Tandarra prospect, part of the company’s Bendigo North project, located north of Bendigo in Victoria.
The RC drilling intercept of one metre at 33.6 grams per tonne gold at a depth of 44 metres is contained inside a four metre interval grading 9.4 grams per tonne gold.
The latest intercept is situated approximately 160m north of the company’s best intercept to date of 34.4 grams per tonne gold over a 10 metre interval.
The Navarre also intersected further broad gold mineralisation of 25m at 0.8 g/t gold, including 6m at 1.9 g/t gold from 41m down hole.
Navarre is conducting a 25,000 metre RC drilling campaign at Tandarra targeting shallow gold-bearing quartz reefs and is seeking to build a mineral resource at the project by the end of 2012.
Satellite image of Tandarra prospect showing location of diamond
drilling, significant drill intercepts and status of RC drilling.
Source: Company announcement
“We are encouraged by the broad zone of shallow mineralisation in RCT025 as it now links approximately 320 metres of wide zones of mineralisation in the RC results, which themselves are part of the 2.5 kilometres of confirmed strike established by previous AC drilling,” Navarre Minerals managing director Geoff McDermott said in the company’s announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.
Navarre believes mineralisation at Tandarra is analogous to the Bendigo Goldfield, approximately 40kms to the south, insofar as nuggety high grade gold is dispersed throughout an envelope of lower grade material.
“We are particularly pleased by the high grade result in RCT050 as we expect to find high grade gold results as our drill density increases in this style of mineralization,” McDermott said.
The relatively shallow depth of the gold mineralisation it has identified so far has Navarre working to establish whether an open pit operation is feasible as a means of mining the high-grade gold within a broader envelope of mineralised material.
“Tandarra was identified by modern exploration techniques, which see through the covering sediments, and followed up by inexpensive scout AC drilling,” McDermott explained.
“Our challenge now is to define the major gold-bearing reefs near surface and to investigate the quartz reefs which repeat at depth, much as they do at Bendigo and other Victorian goldfields.”
Navarre Minerals said it expects to release more drill results from 25 RC holes at Tandarra that have been completed but await assay results, as well as further RC and diamond holes that have yet to be drilled as part of the current program.