Grants Creek Project
"A part of the Kimberley Region Projects"
North East Halls Creek WA
Like the Angelo project, Grants Creek is located in the Eastern Zone of the Lamboo Complex. However, the mineralised reefs are close to the contact between the meta-volcanics of the Biscay Formation and the Olympio formation.
Metminco believes there is strong likelihood of strike extensions to these reefs as well as the discovery of new mineralised zones that have no surface expression.
Location and Access
The Grants Creek Project is located approximately 60km north of Halls Creek. Access is via the Great Northern
Highway for some 60km then easterly, by well maintained station tracks to the Alice Downs homestead before turning southerly to the Grant’s Creek mining centre. The tenements are wholly within the Alice Downs Pastoral Lease.
Tenure
Tenure over the historic Grants Creek mining centre is by 8 contiguous prospecting licences covering an area of 14.62km2.
Geology & Mineralization
Grants Creek goldfield lies just to the east of the NNE trending Halls Creek Fault, within the Eastern Zone of the Lamboo Complex. The identified reefs lie either wholly within the metabasalts of the Biscay Formation (Star of Kimberley reef), or at close to the contact of the Biscay Formation and the Woodward Dolerite (Perseverance reefs) and occasionally in the turbiditic sediments of the Olympio Formation (Moody reefs). Structurally, the Grants Creek prospect lies between splays of the regionally significant Halls Creek Fault.
The reefs within the meta-basalts average 0.6 metre in thickness and 150 to 250 metres in strike length. The quartz is dark blue to dark grey and glassy; it generally contains abundant pyrite, galena and rare chalcopyrite. Box works and limonite patches and small gossans are common in the oxidized ore, however, the oxidized zone is shallow and sulphides occur usually within 1 metre or so of the surface. The gold is mostly associated with the sulphides.
Southern Ventures commenced modern exploration in 1980. A subsequent Joint Venture with Dominion Mining conducted an extensive soil and rock chip sampling program in the vicinity of the known workings and attempted to test for strike extensions of the mineralized systems by costeaning. Subsequent drilling focused on two main prospect areas, in and around the historic workings, namely Perseverance and the Star of Kimberley.
The joint venture defined a resource for the project of an indicated 67,000tonnes at 4.97g/t gold, 16.28 g/t silver, 0.73% lead and 0.25% zinc.
Metminco’s joint venture partner, Pacrim Energy Limited commenced a new phase of exploration activity in 2003. Rock chip sampling returned numerous high grade assays up to 84 g/t Au. Subsequent auger soil sampling defined additional prospective zones aided by the interpretation of Landsat images. A main target horizon has been outlined by mapping and anomalous gold & arsenic soil geochemistry over 3 kilometre strike and 250m width (Figure 5).
Drilling is permitted over this zone and Metminco intends to review the target zone as a priority and will undertake a drilling program during the latter half of 2007,subject to drill rig availability.
Exploration Potential
The Grants Creek Project has the potential to host economic deposits of gold. Previous exploration has largely
focussed on the historic workings of the known reefs, with only limited examination on the strike extensions and
almost no examination of repetitions within similar lithological horizons. Recent soil sampling program revealed
other anomalous areas away from the known reefs.
Metminco considers the project area to have potential for an increase in the size of the known mineralisation and for the discovery of concealed gold mineralisation in favourable structural settings.
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