New Ballarat Gold Corporation plc has begun a diamond drill programme at the historic former producing mine of Berringa in the Victoria gold fields of southeast Australia.
JOINT VENTURE
The joint venture (JV) company comprises Red Rock Resources plc (50.1%) and Power Metal Resources (49.9%).
PROGRAMME
The JV plans 1,000 metres of diamond drilling with an estimated five drill holes each to an average depth of 200m into three priority targets of South Birthday, Berringa Syndicate and Kangaroo East.
Operations will test for the extensions of gold mineralisation near previously mined areas with first gold assay results expected in early 2023.
Alongside drilling the JV is investigating the potential to excavate and reopen a buried entrance to Berringa which would provide access to the shaft sub-surface.
The partners are also in the process of renewing its licence EL5535 for five years effective from 16 November 2022.
NUGGETY MINERALISATION
Red Rock chairman Andrew Bell said that the gold fields were typified by nuggety mineralisation.
“The key thing to remember in the gold fields is that anything over 0.1 g/t may be regarded as mineralised, and as recent results in a neighbouring tenement showed, a sampling of one half of a core may yield little gold, while the other half core on sampling may yield over 20 g/t.
“We are drilling at this stage for structure, and drilling out a structure to try to delineate a mineralised body at a typical 6-8 g/t gold grade would be a later stage.”
GOLD ENDOWMENT
Chief executive Paul Johnson said that there had been 293,250 ounces of historical high grade gold production at Berringa.
“We believe there may be a considerable remaining gold endowment which this drill programme is designed to partly investigate.
“It is common for exploration companies to start from ground up with grassroots exploration.
“In our Victoria gold fields JV, we are far further up the progress and value curve and are now drilling to test for the along strike and down dip extensions of previously mined out high-grade mineralised gold lodes.”