DevEx Resources (ASX: DEV) has identified a zone of extensive surface gold mineralisation at the company’s recently granted Basin Creek Copper-Gold Project in New South Wales.
Initial exploration has focused on the Main Ridge Prospect, with rock chip results returning significant gold values of up to 8.0 g/t gold and anomalous gold defined over a strike length of 1.2km towards the northern part of the prospect, which remains open in both directions.
Managing Director Brendan Bradley said anomalous gold values in rock chip samples are also closely associated with other elevated pathfinder metals, with peak values for lead (1865ppm Pb), molybdenum (257ppm Mo), bismuth (10.3ppm), antimony (25.8ppm) and silver (20 ppm Ag), suggestive of an epithermal or high-level porphyry gold system.
Mr Bradley said a compilation of historical exploration data over the entire Prospect, including the close association of gold with lead-in-soil geochemistry and the extensive silica, sericite clay and potassic (adularia) alteration, supports the company’s view that the gold system has the potential to extend over a strike length of more than 4 kilometres within altered felsic volcanic and porphyritic rocks.
The Basin Creek Project is located within Silurian volcanic and sedimentary rocks of the Lachlan Fold Belt, a major geological province which hosts world-class copper-gold deposits such as Cadia- Ridgeway (Newcrest Mining) and Northparkes (China Molybdenum Co Ltd) as well as several large- scale Silurian age deposits including the McPhillamys Gold Mine (Regis Resources Limited), a +2Moz gold deposit.
Mr Bradley said the McPhillamys gold discovery (2.29Moz gold: Regis Resources Ltd, March 2019) represents an important exploration mineralisation style within the Lachlan Fold Belt of NSW.
Similarities between the mineralisation style at McPhillamys and the Main Ridge Prospect include similar pathfinder metal associations such as lead, molybdenum, bismuth, with gold mineralisation associated within a large potassic alteration zone.
The company now plans to carry out field investigations in the