Kalgoorlie Gold Mining has kicked off a high-resolution aeromagnetic geophysical survey in the northern half of its Pinjin project, 140km north-east of Western Australia’s important mining centre of Kalgoorlie.
The company expects the survey to provide modern quality data with significantly better resolution than is currently available for the northern part of the project that covers the prospective Jungle Dam area and southward extensions of the Edjudina Goldfield.
It will be the first detailed aeromagnetic coverage of the Laverton Tectonic Zone (LTZ) between the southern end of the Edjudina Goldfield and the northern end of the Pinjin Goldfield. The enhanced resolution from the survey will surpass the publicly-available regional datasets that lack the clarity required for detailed exploration targeting.
The Pinjin project comprises a single exploration licence measuring about 38km north-to-south and averages about 5km wide east-to-west. Its southern half abuts the western flanks of the LTZ, while its northern half projects into the structure’s central and more highly-sheared fabric.
The LTZ hosts many current and previously-mined operations and prospects. The more notable operations include the Sunrise Dam, Granny Smith, Rebecca, Anglo Saxon and Wallaby projects that have contributed to its estimated 30 million-ounce production status.
KalGold says the new dataset will enable detailed definition of gold targets in the northern half of its Pinjin project. Known gold mineralisation in the survey area includes the company’s Jungle Dam prospect, which is an under-explored anomalous north-west/south-east-trending structure that passes through the Jungle Dam granite.
The granite shows up in magnetics data as an ovoid area with a low-magnetic signature measuring about 8km long and 5km wide. But while detail is diffuse in current data, it is evident at a regional scale that the intrusive is associated with a significant distortion of elements of the LTZ around it.
Management views the contact zone between the Jungle Dam granite and its enclosing elements of the LTZ as providing a key target area for gold mineralisation, which has been overlooked until now due to its almost ubiquitous surface cover.
The company says the new survey data will also match the high quality of data south of Hawthorn Resources’ Anglo Saxon gold deposit and which has already assisted exploration targeting at its Wessex, Kirgella Gift and Providence deposits, in addition to defining new focuses throughout the greater project area.
KalGold has already defined a combined maiden 2.43 million-tonne mineral resource at a grade of 1 gram per tonne gold for the reinvigorated old Kirgella Gift and Providence mining areas and it hopes to build on that through further exploration.
It comes on top of work that has already expanded the areas from 300m to 500m of strike to more than 1150m and shows that gold mineralisation remains open in every direction.
KalGold expects the field component of its survey work will be completed by the end of the month. The data will then be processed and integrated with other regional geophysical datasets, including its in-house tailored dataset, to ensure uniform high-resolution coverage of the entire Pinjin project area.
Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@businessnews.com.au
By Doug Bright
