Report on exploration results year ending April 88.

Abstract

The correspondence of the anomalous gold samples with the zones of anomalous decrepitation due to high levels of CO2 indicates that the anomalies defined warrant detailed examination. The anomalous but low levels of gold in surface outcrop are considered encouraging as the exploration target is a non -outcropping deposit in which most of the gold was precipitated lower down in the hydrothermal system. The decrepitation anomalies show that the presence of CO2 rich fluid inclusions in quartz is quite common in this area.The area is clearly one of epithermal deposition, the heat source perhaps being the nearby granite intrusions and several additional locations of anomalous CO2 rich fluid inclusions have now been defined where there has been no past Au production. Such fluids may well have transported gold in solution and have deposited it as the fluid conditions changed. anomaly first outlined from the decrepitation results in last year's work has been substantiated by further inf ill sampling which confirms that it has a continuous strike length of approximately 2 Km. Surface rock chip gold geochemistry also this feature. In addition, several small leakage anomalies have been located nearby. This leads to the interpretation of a major fluid flow system located near the western side of the claim group. The fluids in this system were rich in CO2 indicating they were sourced at depth. Such deep seated CO2 rich fluids are a commonty with gold mineralisation in this region. The low, but anomalous levels of gold in surface outcrop are highly encouraging, showing that the system did transport gold, which may have been deposited lower down in the thermal system, either as the of boiling, CO2 effervescence or temperature decrease as the fluids approached the (then) surface. The geophysical surveys undertaken to substantiate the known decrepitation anomaly have failed to provide any targets, primarily because of problems in using the Sirotem method in this high resistivity environment. It is proposed that three drillholes should be sited to test the combined gold geocheiistry and decrepitation anomalies at depth. Further surface geochemical sampling would be useful to more accurately pinpoint the best drill sites. It should remembered that the target is a buried mineralisation whose only surface representation is the gold depleted fluids at the top of the thermal system and high levels of gold in the surface samples are not necessary.