THE INSIDE STORY: Perth-based exploration play Riversgold (ASX: RGL) is building on new gold discoveries in the Eastern Goldfields as it prepares for a second campaign in Alaska’s Tintina Belt.
Riversgold is active in the Eastern Goldfields of Western Australia, a region that still provides plenty of blue sky for those prepared to put in the hard yards, as is the American state of Alaska where the company is exploring in the Tintina Gold Province.
In the past six months, much of Riversgold’s activities have focused on its portfolio of gold tenements in the Eastern Goldfields, southeast of Kalgoorlie.
Riversgold has completed several rounds of RC drilling in the area, the majority of which have focussed on the Farr-Jones property, where the company has intersected high-grade gold mineralisation in multiple positions.
Farr-Jones is approximately 15 kilometres northeast of Silver Lake Resources’ (ASX: SLR) Randalls processing plant.
It is one of several targets Riversgold identified from historical surface geochemical surveys and limited drilling completed during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Prior to Riversgold, only a single line of drilling completed in 1991-92 had drill tested Farr Jones below 100m with the deepest hole from that program intersecting 2m at 4.71g/t gold from 143m down hole.
In three RC drilling programs completed at Farr Jones in 2018, Riversgold confirmed three zones of easterly dipping gold mineralisation over a strike of 600m.
Drilling delivered high-grade drill hits of:
FJRC0002
4 metres at 6.3 grams per tonne gold from 119m; and
FJRC0001
3m at 17.8g/t gold from 182m.
Regional soil sampling completed by Riversgold during 2018 highlighted the prospectivity of the Farr Jones area, with soil anomalies previously untested by drilling identifying anomalous areas further north.
A number of these targets were tested by aircore drilling in late 2018.
Two new gold discoveries were made at the Eales and Little targets, like Farr Jones named after the World Cup winning Wallabies side of the 1990s.
These results mean the Allan Kelly-led company has identified multiple zones of gold mineralisation along a north-south trending strike spanning 2.5km, demonstrating the potential for the project to host multiple gold deposits over a decent strike length.
“The aircore drilling results confirmed the potential for multiple gold deposits to be delineated within the wider Farr-Jones project,” Riversgold managing director Allan Kelly told The Resources Roadhouse.
“We were previously looking at the potential for a single gold deposit at Farr-Jones, but we believe we have now discovered oxide and/or primary gold mineralisation over 2.5 kilometres of strike beneath soil anomalies at Farr-Jones, Eales and Little, with a number of other soil anomalies still to test.
“We think we have just scratched the surface at this exciting new gold project and are looking forward to systematically testing it with further soil sampling and drilling.”
The aircore drilling Riversgold conducted at Eales and Little is relatively wide spaced, and the company expects to be back in the region to complete a program of systematic grid aircore drilling with deeper follow-up RC drilling where required.
The drill rigs are also planned to return to Farr Jones, as well as testing other gold anomalies identified in the region such as Horan, around 500m west of the Eales discovery.
But prior to this, Riversgold has turned its attention to the Queen Lapage gold prospect following the granting of permits which have facilitated Riversgold’s first drilling of this large target located under one of the salt lakes scattered throughout the region.
Queen Lapage encompasses approximately 17km of the Randall Fault, a major mineralised structure that hosts several substantial gold occurrences.
Approximately 11km of the Randall Fault is located under the thin lake sediments of Lake Yindarlgooda where local geology is characterised by a North-North-West trending package of mafic/ultramafic rocks and clastic sediments separated by a faulted contact.
This is akin to what the company has encountered at the Farr-Jones prospect, and like Farr-Jones, the contact at Queen Lapage has been cross-cut by numerous North-East-trending faults.
Historical shallow drilling intersected anomalous gold at several locations within an interpreted shear zone to the west of the Randall Fault, however the drilling was sporadic and mostly limited to the islands within the lake.
No drilling has been conducted at Queen Lapage since the early 2000s and Riversgold’s initial program of 200 wide-spaced aircore holes will be completed in early February as the first important step in the systematic testing of the major target.
“We always considered Queen Lapage to be one of the most prospective targets we had,” Kelly said.
“It was a highlight of our company prospectus when we listed in 2017 and was one of the main reasons for Evolution’s investment in the company.
“We believe it has all the hallmarks of a highly prospective gold target and the scale to potentially host multiple gold deposits along the Randall Shear Zone.”
Further afield in the United States of America, Riversgold has a 100 per cent-interest in three projects in southwest Alaska through a wholly-owned Alaskan subsidiary.
The projects are located at the western end of the Tintina Gold Province, which hosts the giant 45 million-ounce Donlin Creek gold deposit, which is owned equally by wholly-owned subsidiaries of NOVAGOLD and Barrick Gold Corporation.
The province hosts other intrusion-related gold deposits, such as Fort Knox, Pogo and Livengood.
Riversgold completed its first Alaskan field season last year completing geochemical and geophysical surveys over several targets along with a single diamond drill holes at each of the Luna, Luna East and Quicksilver targets.
From the work carried out to date, the company has identified multiple outcropping high-grade gold occurrences along the 40-kilometre-long North Fork Fault corridor.
“We copped more than our share of bad luck in Alaska last year when mechanical problems severely limited the amount of diamond drilling we had hoped to complete,” Kelly said.
“The work we did complete however only added to our belief in the prospectivity of the region to host world-class deposits and we’ve added to our ground position ahead of what we’re hoping will be a more active 2019 field season in Alaska starting in the middle of the year.”
Back in Australia, the company is also exploring for a large Iron-Oxide Copper-Gold deposit at two highly prospective 100 per cent-owned IOCG projects at Churchill Dam and Burt Lagoon in another well-known region, the Olympic Copper-Gold Province of South Australia.
The Churchill Dam prospect is located approximately 90km South-West of the giant Olympic Dam copper-gold-silver-uranium-rare earth element (REE) deposit and 60km west of the Carrapateena and Khamsin deposits.
Churchill Dam is characterised by a large gravity anomaly that has been previously shown to host brecciated and hematite-altered Gawler Range Volcanics with anomalous copper, gold, uranium and REEs along with potassic and sodic alteration.
The Burt Lagoon prospect is located at the intersection of the Torrens Hinge Zone and a North-West trending regional gravity lineament that passes through the Punt Hill and Mt Gunson copper deposits, as well as the company’s existing Churchill Dam IOCG project.
These prospects received a recent boost with Riversgold receiving all approvals required for drill testing of the targets following an announcement by its big-end-of-town neighbour, BHP releasing drill results from its nearby Oak Dam West target.
Riversgold Ltd (ASX: RGL)
…The Short Story
HEAD OFFICE
Suite 6
125 Melville Pde
Como WA 6152
Ph: +61 8 6500 7375
Email: info@riversgold.com.au
Website: www.riversgold.com.au
DIRECTORS
Roderick Webster, Allan Kelly, Jeffrey Foster, Aaron Colleran
