A scoping programme of shallow trench sampling and aircore drilling will commence as soon as the necessary equipment and contractors have been selected. It is anticipated that the programme will be completed within the next four to six weeks.
Lodestar’s Camel Hills project comprises five tenements and a total area of 924 square kilometres over the Errabiddy Shear Zone in the Gascoyne Province of Western Australia.
The ESZ forms a 100 kilometre long, east northeasttrending shear zone at the boundary of the Archaean Narryer Terrane and Palaeoproterozoic rocks of the Glenburgh Terrane. Significant gold geochemical anomalies have been identified at both regional and local scales in historic data within the ESZ.
The target, named the Big Sky prospect, comprises a 1.2 kilometre long litho-structural zone defined by the east-northeast trending boundary between magnetic and non-magnetic Palaeoproterozoic metamorphic rocks. The magnetite is believed to be a product of large-scale hydrothermal alteration around major structural breaks within the ESZ.
The Big Sky prospect is located approximately 1.1 kilometres north of the mapped contact between re-worked Archaean gneiss and the Camel Hills metamorphics. This contact is believed to be a major structure throughout the development of the ESZ and is connected at depth to the Cardilya Fault, a deep boundary fault that penetrates the lower crust and upper mantle.
The magnetic unit is associated with a large gold anomaly in regional stream sampling and strongly anomalous local soil sampling that was the target of previous RC drilling. Lodestar’s programme will target the northern extension of local gold anomalies, on the lower slopes of the ridge beneath a shallow cover of transported colluvium, for shear-hosted lode gold mineralisation.
A reconnaissance field visit with consulting geologist Dr Walter Witt, for the purpose of reviewing the setting of the Big Sky gold target, has provided an insight into the geology and alteration of the metamorphosed host rocks.
Limited rock sampling over the area suggests that the mineralisation is associated with significant biotite-magnetite alteration that is commonly associated with intrusion-related gold mineralisation. This interpretation is supported by geochemical zonation in historic soil sampling that shows a central gold anomaly surrounded by anomalous Cu, Pb and Zn.
Metal associations similar to those of felsic to intermediate intrusions in the Laverton region are also strongly elevated over the Big Sky anomaly. The intrusion-related gold interpretation is consistent with the GSWA predictive mineral systems anlaysis1 that identified potential for intrusion-related gold systems in the Camel Hills area.
The review has identified other areas in the region, on the basis of limited data, that may have similar potential to host gold mineralisation. These areas will also be assessed in the coming months.
