Annual and final report for Coronet Hill Poly-Metallic Project EL 10004

Abstract

The historic mining centre of Coronet Hill is located 220km south-east of Darwin. The Tenement securing the project area is on a major, mineralised structure known as the Coronet Fault that trends northwest-southeast. Historical mine workings along the Coronet Fault and adjacent points were mined intermittently for silver, copper and tin between 1888 and 1918. Alluvial tin was also produced elsewhere from workings at the Mary River Camp and the Ross mine. Successive waves of appraisals of the area the subject of the Tenement by historic and modern explorers has shown the Coronet Fault zone and parallel structures to be anomalous in tin, tungsten, silver base metals over 4km of strike within the Tenement. Work in recent years was principally directed towards precious and base-metals and tin and tungsten were secondary targets. Previous exploration concentrated upon evaluation of the sulphide-rich and narrow historic lodes. There is evidence that the tin and tungsten mineralisation is not only of greater strike extent than previously tested, but may also occur in the alteration zones laterally adjacent to the lodes. Furthermore paralleling structures and cross structures have received little modern exploration. The tenement is situated in the southern part of the Pine Creek Inlier (PCI). This major mineral province of the Northern Territory covers about 66,000km2 and is centred 170km south of the city of Darwin. The region is notable as one of the world's largest and richest uranium provinces and also as a significant producer of gold, base metals, silver, iron, tin and tungsten. Geologically the Pine Creek Inlier consists of Proterozoic-aged (530-2500 million years old) meta-sedimentary rocks overlying a gneissic and granitic Archaean-aged (2500-3800 million years old) basement. Geological models of tin occurrences commonly involve mineralisation within close proximity to igneous margins. In this respect the tenement is highly prospective due to its setting proximal to a granitic intrusion known to be responsible for poly-metallic mineralisation occurrence in the area. Geophysical evidence clearly demonstrates the presence of a sub-surface intrusive body in parts of the tenement. The previous tenement holder was encouraged by this fact and commissioned an independent assessment of the tin potential of the area (J. Fabray, 2004). This report concurred with the view that there is good potential for a hard-rock, economic tin resource to be discovered in the area. It is evident that the Coronet Fault is a significantly under-explored feature responsible for structurally channelling mineralisation in the region. A significant program of work has been conducted by NRPL over the past three years. This exploration included geochemical and geophysical techniques to identify priority targets for drilling. A program of gradient-array induced polarisation (IP) has highlighted zones of high chargeability indicative of massive to disseminated sulphide mineralisation along the fault that will require further geochemical sampling and detailed geological mapping. It is also intended to investigate the possibility of hydrothermally-sourced platinum group element (PGE) mineralisation in the tenement. This unusual style of PGE mineralisation has been identified at Coronation Hill, a significant gold-platinum-palladium resource located approximately 25km to the north-west which bears some striking similarities to the geological setting at Coronet Hill.