Brocks Creek Project MLN 1139 GDC Final Report Geophysics and Drilling Collaborations (GDC) Program Round 14

Abstract

Bacchus Resources (Bacchus) aimed to increase the knowledge of the Brocks Creek mineral system through deeper brownfields diamond drilling and bring forward resource development with the aid of the Geophysics and Drilling Collaborations (GDC) program funded by the Resourcing the Territory initiative. Bacchus' Brocks Creek Project (MLN 1139) located 140 km southeast of Darwin lies within the Archaean to Palaeoproterozoic Pine Creek Orogen (PCO), one of the major mineral provinces of Australia. The PCO is host to significant mineral resources of gold, uranium and platinum group metals, as well as substantial base metals, silver, iron and tin-tantalum mineralisation with mining and exploration occurring in the region since the early 1870's. The Brocks Creek Project has historically been the focus of open pit, underground and alluvial gold mining and has produced significant quantities of gold along the Brocks Creek Shear Zone and incorporates the main gold mineralisation of Brocks Creek, Faded Lily, Alligator and Rising Tide and the minor ore locations of Burgan, Crocodile and John Bull. Bacchus GDC drilling program tested two target areas outside of the existing Identified Resources with five (5) deep diamond drill holes. Three between Faded Lily and Zapopan deposits to obtain structural and metallurgical samples from the hanging wall and footwall lodes and drilling deeper to test for an additional third lode stratigraphically below as well as testing the anticline axis position of the overturned Brocks Creek Anticline. Two at Alligator deposit designed to intersect both the hanging wall and footwall lodes obtaining structural and metallurgical samples for testing and to test the Burgan Lode at depth. As a brownfield project, the targets are well defined as anticline hosted axial planar gold deposits with minor variations relative to the competency of the host rocks and orientations of the anticlines with remarkable similarities between all the significant deposits in the PCO. There is a large volume of existing drillhole data defining the 'known' deposits along the Brocks Creek Shear Zone, with most of the shallow mineralisation mined out in the 1990's. The depressed gold prices at the time did not make it feasible for large near mine exploration programmes and as a result there are few holes drilled below or outside of the previously defined deposit outlines, and no drillholes deeper than 250 m outside of Zapopan. The completion of drilling during 2021 sits below previous drilling in under-explored 'systems' of the deposit increasing the level of reserves and advancing the Project into resource development. Discovery of additional economic lodes within the known deposits will be fundamental to the redevelopment of Brocks Creek. Overall the drillholes successfully intercepted the known mineralised lodes but did not intersect any unknown lodes. The original grant proposal suggested that the diamond holes were to be used for metallurgical testing, this would have required destruction of the retained half core which was not possible under the collaborative funding agreement as the half core is to be offered to be stored in the core library.