Navarre hits more high-grades at Tandarra

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THE DRILL SERGEANT: Victorian gold exploration play Navarre Minerals has announced further high-grade gold results from a Reverse Circulation (“RC”) drill program currently underway at the Tandarra prospect, part of the company’s Bendigo North project, located 40 kilometres north of Bendigo.

Highlights from the current drilling campaign include:

–    4 metres at 9.2 grams per tonne gold from 18 metres down hole, including 1 metre at 30.9 grams per tonne gold;

–    6m at 3.1g/t gold from 40m down hole, including 4m at 4.5g/t gold;

–    5m at 3.9g/t gold within 12m at 1.8g/t gold from 73m down hole; and

–    2m at 5.5g/t gold from 77m down hole, including 1m at 10.3g/t gold.

 

Satellite image of Tandarra prospect showing location of diamond
drilling, significant drill intercepts and status of RC drilling.
Source: Company announcement

“We are extremely pleased with the RC program to date as the assays are continuing to record broad zones of gold mineralisation, interspersed with pockets of high-grade gold, which we believe supports our Bendigo Goldfield analogy”, Navarre Minerals managing director Geoff McDermott said in the company’s announcement to the Australian Securities Exchange.

“Furthermore, we believe that we are outlining extensively mineralised quartz reef systems, which occur close to surface and appear likely to be continuous along considerable strike lengths.

“Our work so far is delivering encouraging results over 650 metres of strike on the Tomorrow Line, which lies within the 2.5 kilometres of strike previously delineated by air-core drilling at Tandarra.”

Navarre said it believes mineralisation at the Tandarra prospect to be analogous to the nearby Bendigo Goldfield, which historically has produced 22 million ounces of gold.

The company is focusing its drilling on the top 100m from surface, as it believes gold mineralisation intersected at shallow depths offers potential for an open pit project that could benefit from bulk mining techniques.

“Underground gold mining in Victoria has been a challenge in recent times because of the requirement to locate and selectively mine erratically distributed high-grade pods around and under historic mines,” McDermott said.

“We believe that an open pit project in a previously un-mined area may prove more successful because the reduced cost structure of open pit mining, as compared to underground mining, allows extraction to commence on the basis of lower costs and lower break-even gold grades.

“Such an approach at Tandarra could potentially enable the high grade gold to be recovered within the broader zones of gold mineralisation, without the challenges of developing deeper underground mines and navigating around old workings that are often poorly documented.”

Navarre said it expects to release more drill results from over 25 already-completed RC and diamond holes at Tandarra yet to be assayed, as well as further holes to be drilled as part of the current program.

The company has another air-core drill rig scheduled to be onsite in May this year to resume scout drill testing of potential quartz reef targets identified by recent geophysical surveys.