Barton Gold’s due diligence on about 15 years’ worth of geological data may start to pay off shortly with a razor focused drill rig set and ready to test the more exciting geological targets at its Tarcoola gold project in South Australia. The company’s maiden exploration program will comprise up to 6,000 metres of RC drilling and will test for “mine-ready” extensions of mineralisation underneath and around the existing Perseverance open pit.
The Tarcoola project is currently host to a non-JORC resource of 45,000 ounces of gold and according to Barton, the ore body is still very much open and presents opportunities in multiple directions.
Privately owned Barton has a clear focus on building up a mineable inventory of ore at Tarcoola that will see it secure a potentially fast-tracked pathway to production ahead of a planned ASX listing early next year. The company already has its very own 650Ktpa gold mill located at the old Challenger mine site, just 130km to the north west.
Barton is targeting the Perseverance Shear, Granite Vein and Peel Conglomerate targets in its first pass drill campaign.
Historical intersections under the existing Perseverance pit include 1m grading 125 grams per tonne gold, 5m grading 20.6g/t and 2m grading 33.8g/t gold.
Another high-grade target underneath the pit, the Granite Vein, features impressive intercepts such as 4m grading 14.8g/t and 2m grading 13.7g/t gold.
To the south-south-west of the Perseverance pit, historical ounce plus drill hits include 6m grading 43.6g/t and 1m grading 34.7g/t gold.
A shearing shed hand discovered Tarcoola in 1893, which lies at the junction of the Trans-Australian and Adelaide to Darwin Railways.
Mining of the Perseverance open pit kicked off in 2016 by the former owners and Barton has already identified about 10,700 ounces of gold, ready to process that was left behind in old stockpiles.
Barton said the pit bottom also has about 25,000 ounces above 2g/t gold defined from the last in-pit grade control drilling program.
Previous grade control drilling by the former owners in the Perseverance Pit threw up some coffee spitting numbers, including 11m grading 73.3g/t, 19m grading 26.7g/t, 13m grading 21.9g/t, 5m grading 53.6g/t and 12m grading 17.6g/t gold – and all are true width intersections.
With the previous drilling providing an enticing sign that the high-grade shoots might extend at depth, Barton is about to test its geological theories as the drill rig starts to do its thing.
The mineralisation mined in the Perseverance pit is no orphan either with a number of additional sites within a 2km mineralised zone within the existing mining lease previously throwing up some enticing drill numbers that were never followed up.
Wider historical scout drilling at the Old Flame prospect, just 1km from the Perseverance pit, hit 22m grading 6.75g/t gold from 15m and 3m grading 5.03g/t gold from just 28m.
With at least 600 artisanal workings all within a stone’s throw of the pit, Tarcoola looks to have plenty of near mine blue sky opportunities.
The adjacent historical “Tarcoola Blocks” are said to have yielded around 57,000 ounces at a ridiculous 43g/t gold.
Numerous gold targets lie further afield too that are outside of the mining lease.
They are defined by a combination of new geophysical datasets and calcrete geochemical sampling. Barton has grouped these targets into the Western and Eastern zones.
The Warburton prospect in the Western zone includes a 16m drill hit grading 3.4g/t gold and the Victory prospect in the Eastern zone features 5m grading 4.8g/t gold to name just a few.
With a potentially commercial base of ore at Tarcoola that is easily accessible via a pre-stripped, mine ready site and all the mining infrastructure already in place, Barton is actually well placed to make that difficult leap from explorer/developer to producer that eludes so many small capped companies.
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By Matt Birney
