Annual exploration report SEL 10341 Pioneer Year ending 29 September 2005

Abstract

SEL 10341 'Pioneer' is located 165 km SE of Darwin, NT. It forms part of the Union Reefs Project tenements and is subject to the Burnside Joint Venture, managed by subsidiaries of Northern Gold NL and Harmony Gold (Australia) Ltd in equal shares. The tenement of 18 blocks was granted to AngloGold (Ashanti) Australia Ltd on 30th September 2003 and was transferred to the Burnside JV subsequent to purchase of the mill and tenements in August 2004. This is the second anniversary of the tenement and a statutory reduction of 9 blocks, comprising the western sector of the SEL, was registered earlier in 2005. In the first year of the tenement no work was reported on the SEL by AngloGold as they were preparing the project for sale following closure of the mill. Previously the central two blocks of the SEL had been held by several companies and then extensively explored by Acacia Resources as EL 8172 'Ennis'. Following acquisition in the second tenement year the Burnside JV conducted a regional interpretation of the ground while focusing on developing gold ores at Pine Creek and at Burnside though drilling programs. The principal objective was to prove sufficient economic gold mineralisation in the region to re open the Union Reefs mill. The tenement occupies a position that straddles the Pine Creek Tectonic Zone (PCTZ), a NNW trending shear suture that passes through the Pine Creek and Union Reefs gold fields. Rocks belonging to the Burrell Creek Formation predominate with fold enclaves of older South Alligator Group sediments present within the shear zone and flanking this zone to the north west. The metasedimentary sequence is limited by contacts with granite batholiths of the Cullen Suite to the northeast and southwest. The SEL encloses the Elizabeth Group of mineral leases and claims covering old workings on the PCTZ. Interpretations of the structural setting of the Elizabeth Group suggests it occupies sheared out anticlines within the PCTZ. These NNW axes and strike faults have been cut obliquely by later WNW fracture swarms that are thought to have focused gold mineralisation in the Union Reefs field. Late EL 8172 'Ennis', now incorporated into SEL 10341, covered a sector of PCTZ north west of Elizabeth and contains similar gold occurrences explored by Acacia Resources Ltd and others.