Blackham looks to unlock secrets of Wiluna

OUT AND ABOUT: Perth-based gold explorer Blackham Resources has told the Paydirt 2012 Australian Gold Conference making up for an historic lack of detailed drilling is the key to unlocking its future gold opportunity in one of Western Australia’s oldest goldfields.

Presenting on the second day of the Perth conference Blackham Resources managing director Bryan Dixon, said the Wiluna goldfield province remained a large, highly prospective tenement holding but had suffered from being formerly unloved and forgotten – despite significant previous operating mines, infrastructure and residual gold resources.

Blackham took ownership of the Matilda gold project in November last year through its acquisition of Kimba Resources.

It has since announced a strategy to grow the existing gold resource of 12.5 million tonnes at 1.9 grams per tonne for 757,000 Inferred ounces to above one million ounces in the medium term through delineating 4 million tonnes of plus 2 grams per tonne oxide reserves.

“Our objective is to grow the existing resources to over one million ounces in the short term and convert a large portion of our existing oxide resources to reserve status,” Dixon said.

“What has been ignored is that Blackham now commands a very major position within the Wiluna greenstone belt – a structure that has already supported more than four million ounces of gold production.

“Yet there has been little systematic regional exploration of Matilda in more than a decade.”

Dixon explained that the Wiluna greenstone belt is a structure, which has historically been subjected to more than 39,000 drill holes sunk.

He said Blackham’s approach will be a “data mining” one to revalidate and assess this massive bank of knowledge to enable the company to identify any new opportunities for oxide resources and to identify the primary gold resource in the area.

”Limited drill testing has proven that depth extensions at Matilda continue for at least 300 metres but only the project’s oxide material has been mined from local source pits and generally to less than 50 metres depth,” Dixon said.

“Most of these pits also remain open along strike and we have identified primary down-plunge targets that have yet to be fully tested – so in our view, the upside for Matilda is considerable and benefits from the fact the broader area has been mined on and off for more than 100 years.”

Dixon said Blackham’s analysis of the various existing pits along the Matilda project suggested previous mining had only scratched the surface of what is a very large mineralised gold system with mineralisation found to extend beneath and along strike of those current pits.

“Our conclusion is that Matilda, including its high grade shoots, offers the sort of geometries for multiple ore bodies, possibly on a bulk mining approach to either open pit or underground,” he said.

Blackham has commenced a re-evaluation of the mining economics of the Matilda pits and resources based on the current gold price.