Final exploration report EL 23543 Burnside

Abstract

EL 23543 is located 140 km SE of Darwin, NT and its southernmost sector is 3 km north of the historic Brocks Creek rail siding on the Adelaide-Darwin railway. The tenement is subject to the Burnside Joint Venture, managed by Burnside Operations P/L comprising Territory Goldfields NL and Buffalo Creek Mines NL. The latter are subsidiaries of Northern Gold NL and Harmony Gold (Australia) P/L respectively. The tenement encompasses the north, eastern and southern contact zone of the elliptical Burnside Batholith as well as thermally and tectonically altered metasedimentary and intrusive rocks of the South Alligator Group. This group is low in the Pine Creek Geosyncline sequence and the contact zone is known from previous explorers to contain several gold anomalies and prospects. The tenement was live for a two year period before all blocks were absorbed into SEL 24532. This SEL, in part replacing late SEL 9591, was granted on May 30th 2005 at which date EL 23543 was automatically cancelled. Northern Gold NL, and since April 2002 the Burnside JV, have been actively exploring the Burnside region since the late 1980's. Work to date has been focused on establishing open pit resources through RC drilling at Yam Creek, Mottram's, Chinese South Extension, Fountain Head and Woolwonga. Underground development and diamond drilling has been carried out at the Zapopan Mine and at Cosmo Howley diamond core drilling, at the time of writing, extended the underground resource to 1 million ounces. During its two year life span exploration on grass roots stage tenements such as EL 23543 was subordinate to that on the more gold endowed JV tenements in the Burnside Region. Effort had been mainly expended on extending mineable gold deposits, particularly with the purchase of the Union Reefs gold treatment plant in August 2004. Exploration during its two year life comprised remote sensing interpretation, technical reporting and review of previous exploration work. The area of the tenement had been previously explored by Newcrest Mining Limited using soil sampling to define drilling targets. Several gold anomalies had been reported.