Barton Gold has put its latest phase of development work at Tarcoola to bed, with exploration work across the South Australian gold target including reverse circulation drilling and ground penetrating radar now wrapped up. The work program is partially funded by a grant from the South Australian government and paves the way for an accelerated development program across the historical goldfield in the months ahead.
The company says it has completed 42 drill holes over five separate target areas surrounding the Perseverance open pit, having now ploughed a total of nearly 5,000 metres of drilling into the terrane.
Results are now pending and will no doubt be keenly anticipated by the market given Barton’s systematic evaluation of targets prior to drilling.
The targets include the Perseverance North and Lady Racin’ prospects to the north of the old pit, the Perseverance West and Eclipse targets to the south and the Archer target around 400m to the south-west of the mothballed mine infrastructure.
The company has also completed a detailed ground penetrating radar, or “GPR” survey on the area surrounding the Perseverance pit and it is now piecing together a detailed geological model for the rich ore system.
Barton Gold Managing Director, Alex Scanlon said:“Several of the areas drilled have previously yielded very interesting results and we have also tested some new targets, so we are looking forward to receiving assay results in the coming weeks.”
“The GPR team has also done an impressive job surveying over 100-line kilometres in a relatively short period of time. The data collected will now be processed and analysed in conjunction with our other new and historical data sets, targeting new Perseverance style structure discoveries across ML6455.”
The company is now preparing the drill samples from Tarcoola for dispatch to the laboratory and expects its first results from the program to begin filtering through in early September.
In the meantime, the aspiring miner is not short of drill targets and is looking to begin climbing the ranks of South Australian explorers making waves under the current buoyant market conditions. They include the likes of copper specialist Coda Minerals and fellow gold explorer, Indiana Resources.
Next cab off the rank for Barton will be its Tunkillia gold project, about 70 kilometres to the south-east of Tarcoola. Tunkillia hosts SA’s largest undeveloped gold resource. Work by Barton earlier in the year resulted in a massive 73 per cent increase in the global resource over the project, which now tips the scales at a respectable 26.1 million tonnes at 1.15 grams per tonne gold.
Tunkillia contains an estimated 965,000 ounces of the precious metal, leaving the project knocking on the door of the magic million-ounce club. However, with the drill rig due onsite at Tunkillia before the end of this month, the endowment of the extensive gold system looks due for an upgrade before the close of 2021.
With Barton having now finished a second phase of drilling at Tarcoola and exploration about to get underway in earnest at the nearby Tunkillia camp, the company has barely paused for breath since listing on the ASX in June and now looks set for a very busy second half of the year with waves of results due to be tabled.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Matt Birney
