Mount Monger Project - WA (Silver Lake 100%)
Background
The Mount Monger goldfield is situated within the Kalgoorlie terrane subdivision of the Eastern Goldfields Province. Gold mining began in the Mount Monger area during the early 1900s. The field is marked by a series of historic workings extending northward under recent shallow alluvial cover towards a significant drainage channel. Only sub-cropping mineralisation appears to have been exploited by early miners, with historic workings in the field typically extending to depths of no greater than 80 metres below the surface. Production records indicate that the field has produced in excess of 400,000 oz of gold.
Mount Monger has multi mine protential with the Christmas Flats, Lorna Doone and Costello open cut deposits presently being assessed for mining. The Haoma lode and Caledonian trend also show potential as near term production sources.
Location
Mount Monger Location PlanLocation plan of Mount Monger areas showing the active mine, historical mining areas and untested prospectsClick image to enlarge
The Mount Monger goldfield is located 50 km southeast of Kalgoorlie and is accessible via the Mount Monger road which is bitumen for 15 km then an all weather road for the remaining 35 km. The project consists of 44 granted tenements covering 45 km2 with another 67 km2 under application. All of the resources and historical workings lie within granted tenements.
Geology
The dominant rock types hosting the gold mineralisation are felsic and mafic units. The former comprises felsic to intermediate pyroclastic rocks and coarse volcanogenic sediments. The overlying mafic unit comprises high magnesium basalt with thin chert members. Both units are intruded by layered ultramafic to mafic sills and dykes of felsic porphyry.
Gold mineralisation is hosted by thin (1.0 cm – 2.0 cm up to 1.0 metre wide), sub-vertical dipping quartz veins within north to northeast trending shear zones. Some east-west trending crosscutting zones are also reported to be mineralised.
Resources
Measured Resources | Indicated Resources | Inferred Resources | Total Resources | |||||||||
Deposit | Ore | Grade | Total | Ore | Grade | Total | Ore | Grade | Total | Ore | Grade | Total |
Mount Monger | 93.6 | 37.9 | 114.1 | 272.0 | 7.6 | 66.7 | 544.2 | 8.3 | 144.7 | 909.8 | 11.1 | 325.5 |
Regionally, previous explorers in the Mount Monger goldfield concentrated on finding near surface, oxidised mineralisation suitable for open pit mining. However, historical mining points to the high grade, quartz reef hosted nature of the mineral field, indicating that the real thrust should have been directed towards finding more Daisy Milano look-a-like structures, where ore grades of over 10 g/t Au could be expected.
A large mining company initiated a gold potential study of the Mount Monger field in June 2003. Interpretation of the mineralised structures identified targets with the potential to host between 1.8 Moz and 4.5 Moz over nine independent zones down to a depth of 500 metres. That Company did not proceed with a transaction because the project did not meet its minimum 5 Moz endowment criteria.
Over the history of the Mount Monger goldfield there has been no systematic exploration approach to determine the overall resource potential.
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