Leonora Gold Projects
Overview
Jupiter’s Leonora Projects are strategically located within an 80km radius zone of known gold resources. The Company’s Kurrajong, Grattan Well, Desdemona and Chandlers Reward Projects all have gold mineralisation potential.
Chandlers Reward PLA 37/7050 is still in the application stage. The project covers 1km of potential gold mineralisation approximately 80km north of Leonora. Sampling from old workings has already returned grades of 7g/t+ for this project.
Location
The Kurrajong project is centred approximately 34km northwest of Leonora and is formed by two tenement groups. In total the 36 prospecting licences and one prospecting application cover the project area of approximately 48km. The project area is considered prospective for both gold and nickel mineralisation.
History
Previous exploration programs in the 1970s concentrated on the area’s nickel sulphide potential. By the 1980s, the area’s gold bearing potential was being tested. The gold exploration effectively delineated an irregular boundary between granitoid terrain to the south and a westerly trending layered greenstone sequence to the north dislocated by northerly and west-northwest trending faults. This contact zone was the focus of RAB RC and aircore drill programs. Exploration was hampered due to thick transported over burden in parts of the project area.
During a field visit in January 2006, Jupiter identified three areas at Diorite King that warranted reconnaissance drilling. In April 2006 Jupiter tested two of these areas with encouraging assay results returned.
A program of shallow aircore drill holes was completed mainly over two areas of interest. The campaign included 93 aircore drill holes for a total 1767m with approximately 1700 samples collected for assay by Ultra Trace for low level gold. A number of anomalies were returned.
The first area drilled, called Golden King, is located approximately where previous high grade gold results were obtained from Jupiter’s rock chip sampling in January 2006. The drilling has identified an area with results up to 1.06g/t Au (DKAC011).
The second area is a continuous gold mineralised zone over 600m long and up to 20m wide and completely open at depth. This trend is called the Rose of Diorite trend. Best results over 1m include 1.89g/t, 1.34g/t, 3.04g/t and 3.75g/t Au.
Geology
The tenement group covers a classic greenstone rock suite of the Western Australian goldfields. The dominant rock types of the greenstone succession include ultramafics represented by serpentinite and talc-chlorite schists, mafic volcanics such as basalt and high magnesium basalt and amphibolites after gabbro and dolerite. Persistent chert horizons occur associated with interflow sediments. Apophyses of granitoid and quartz porphyries intrude the greenstone sequence.
The Tarmoola anticline is main regional structural control within the project area. The fold closure has a westerly trend. The greenstone affected are complexly folded and faulted. These complexly folded units with intrusive activity are associated with gold mineralisation at St Barbara’s Tarmoola gold mine just 6km to the west.
Exploration
Exploration programs included field visits, purchase and processing of the satellite data from the Southern Geosciences and Earth scan,
and office studies. A number of small nuggets were found north of
the Diorite King during the field season by prospectors (see Figure 17). Databases are being established to progress to the next round
of field work.
Figure 17.
The three largest gold nuggets weighed 8.9, 2.6 & 5.5g.
Outlook
The Company currently believes that the old workings on the northern trend appear to be under-explored by drill hole testing. A drill hole program over the current reporting period will test the structures associated with the old workings, whilst the anomalies of gold valves intercepted in the 2006 drill program will also be revisited.