The Blackham Resources train continues to gather steam as the company hurtles towards production in Wiluna, Western Australia, possibly as soon as the middle of this year.
Blackham recently announced an upgrade to their existing resources at the Galaxy and Golden Age deposits at the Matilda Gold project in Wiluna with the addition of another 40 000 ounces of gold.
The combined Golden Age and Galaxy resource now sits at 1.85Mt @ 3.6 grams per tonne for a total of 216,000 ounces of gold.
Importantly, the Golden Age resource, which will provide first ore when the old Wiluna Gold Mine springs back to life later this year, now stands at 1.06 million tonnes grading 4.4 grams per tonne for 150 000 ounces of gold.
Golden Age is a high grade quartz reef that has historically produced160,000 ounces of gold grading 9 grams per tonne and was still being mined right up until the closure of the Wiluna Mine in June 2013.
The Golden Age “Middle Zone” where mining will actually commence is currently sampling at around 9 grams per tonne and is very close to surface. The company estimates there are around 53 000 ounces of high grade gold in this zone alone.
The Golden Age reef has existing access via the Bulletin decline and has mining infrastructure in place and good geotechnical conditions to allow easy re-entry to this area of the mine.
Blackham has commenced a 2700m drilling program at Golden Age to prove up its viability as an underground mine and if past spectacular results in this area are anything to go by, it is reasonable to expect some very interesting results to be forthcoming some time soon.
Blackham’s Resource for the entire Matilda Gold project in Wiluna now stands at 44 million tonnes grading 3.3 grams per tonne for a whopping 4.632m ounces of gold.
Managing Director Bryan Dixon said, “The Golden Age and Galaxy resources are both important sources of high grade free milling ore for the initial years of the Matilda Project mine plan. Golden Age has all the required underground infrastructure already in place. From the mining and processing studies conducted to date, the high grades and strong recoveries from these orebodies plus the base load Matilda Mine ore will provide important cash flow to quickly payoff the low capital cost needed to re-commission the Wiluna Gold Plant.”
By Matt Birney
