Barton Gold has landed a $300,000 grant from the South Australian government to ramp up exploration at the company’s Tarcoola gold project. The funding further validates Barton’s strategic position in the Gawler craton where the state government is looking to reinvigorate exploration across the fertile mineral terrane.
Explorers in the Gawler Craton are unlikely to need much of a push however with a clique of specialist players already stamping their mark on the sometimes-overlooked mineral field. In recent months, discoveries by market darlings Coda Minerals and Indiana Resources have raised more than a few eyebrows and drawn a plethora of would-be miners to the Gawler block in search of the next Olympic Dam iron oxide copper gold discovery.
Barton is already ahead of the pack too, having pulled together an enviable package of ground across the rich geological province, with the company’s tenure stretching across more than 200 kilometres of strike. Barton’s project area extends from the mothballed Challenger gold mine that it owns in the north through to South Australia’s largest undeveloped gold deposit at Tunkillia in the south.
The company’s Tarcoola project sits in the middle of its extensive tenure, about 600km north-west of Adelaide and was the focus of Barton’s exploration program in the lead up to its recent listing on the ASX.
Whilst previous work at Tarcoola has included drilling, sampling and various innovative geophysical methods, the $300,000 grant received as part of the South Australian government’s Accelerated Discovery Initiative, or “ADI” will aim to take this work to the next level.
Barton Gold Managing Director, Alex Scanlon said: “The Tarcoola and Tunkillia project areas have been historically under-explored over the last ~20 years. However, our recent work has identified considerable new discovery potential across large-scale structures. This funding will help to further map key structural and stratigraphic controls on mineralisation at the Tarcoola Project and help to identify priority future drilling targets.
The company is now designing a raft of new exploration programs over the historical Tarcoola mining centre and is currently planning advanced geophysical surveying to continue unravelling the subsurface geology and structure of the region.
This work will include both ground penetrating radar, or “GPR” and high-resolution gravity surveys.
The surveys are expected to assist the company’s geologists in the targeting of various regional and near-mine anomalies, with previous seismic surveying having defined the mineralising structures at Tarcoola along a massive 14km of strike.
Barton’s previous work shows the deep-seated gold-rich system extends to more than 2km below surface.
Management says its new funding will also fund the ongoing drill testing of a growing list of targets across the Gawler terrane.
Barton’s GPR survey is already underway and will perhaps help fill in the last few crucial pieces of the puzzle as the company looks to unlock a treasure trove of mineralisation in this most fertile gold province.
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By Matt Birney
