Westar Resources Limited (ASX:WSR) has completed negotiations to become the 100% beneficial owner of the historical Birrigrin Mining Centre, adjoining the company’s’ Gidgee South Gold Project in Western Australia.
Managing Director, Karl Jupp, said the Birrigrin Mining Centre consists of a single mining tenement, M57/352 and hosts several historic gold mines which have recorded extremely high-grade gold production.
The exceptional historic gold grades reported from Birrigrin, combined with a lack of modern exploration, provides a unique and synergistic opportunity to consolidate Westar’s holding in the area and build on the exciting potential of the Gidgee South Gold Project,” Mr Jupp said.
“The Westar geology team are immediately progressing exploration plans at Birrigrin in additional to final preparations for the maiden RC drilling programme at Gidgee South, which will test multiple high-priority targets.”
Many of the historic workings at Birrigrin were developed around surface quartz veining, which were known to be up to several metres wide. Depths of the shafts is highly variable, but known to be largely dependent on the ability to dewater once the water table was reached.
The area defined under M57/352 comprises 113.6 hectares, having been originally marked out in 1992 and held by the vendors or related parties since 1994. Activities have been limited to prospecting for surface and alluvial gold, with no modern or systematic exploration conducted during this time.
Birrigrin is an extension of the 100% Westar owned Gidgee South exploration tenure and is considered highly prospective for shear hosted and quartz lode hosted gold mineralisation within a greenstone terrane.
Westar engaged PGN Geoscience to undertake a geological assessment of Birrigrin, as part of a broader study of the Gidgee South Project.
The company is investigating various methodologies to rapidly advance exploration activities at Birrigrin, including a possible Deep Ground Penetrating Radar (DGPR) Survey to define the historic workings and possible gold bearing quartz reefs within 100m of the ground surface.
Pending the timing of the DGPR and drill rig availability, Westar will assess expediting RC drilling at the Birrigrin Mining Centre in conjunction with the maiden RC drill program at Gidgee South.