The Laura Mine
The project is located in the Redcastle District of central Victoria, a Brownfields exploration project over the Laura-Balmoral-Welcome line of workings. The project lies between Two of Victoria’s largest Gold Producing projects; Fosterville (ASX:KLA & TSE:KL) and Costerfield (TSE:MND)
Fosterville
Fosterville (http://www.klgold.com/assets/operations-and-projects/australia/operations/fosterville-mine/default.aspx ) a multi-million oz Au total endowment and produced 478,616 oz’s Au 2013-2016.
Costerfield
Costerfield (http://www.mandalayresources.com/properties/costerfield/ ) had produced over 100,000 oz’s Au pre 2009, Mandalay Resources has produced 245,500 oz’s Au and 32.5 tonne of Stibnite in 2010-2016.
The mining district was discovered in 1850 and commenced mining in 1859 most of the reef mining had stopped by 1890. Redcastle has seen very little mining since, other than some attempts at reprocessing the tailings of the field in the 1900’s and possibly the 1930’s this district has been held by small prospectors and underfunded companies, with the exception of the most recent holder Nagambie Mining.
Nagambie Mining have evaluated the project area over the past 5 years with the hope of developing a large tonnage, low grade and Heap leachable open pit resource. The project area had some good indications but failed to prove up.
The project has well defined narrow vein deposits most of which have been work down to water or met with a fault that offset the lode. This leaves the opportunity to be successful with targeted diamond drilling to pick up the continuation of lodes under the water table or below offset faults.
This theory has been proven to be successful by Mandalay Resources with the discovery of Cuffley Lode. This deposit was the lower continuation of the Alison Shaft (produced 3,186 oz Au) that was cut off by the Adder and Flat Fault. The continuation was named the Cuffley lode after the exploration geologist instrumental in the discovery (Brian Cuffley). The continuation added over 170,000 oz’s Au and 19.3t of Sb to the company’s Resource.
The link below has a long section of the Cuffley lode, you can see the Alison shaft in the top right of the section with the faults shown. http://www.mandalayresources.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/costerfield_expl_update_sept_2013_full.pdf
The projects mineralisation has formed on the western side of the Redcastle anticline, it is contained to Auriferous quartz-stibnite veins striking north-northwest (354 deg) and dipping steeply to the west or east. They occur either as discrete veins or in mineralised zones that range in thickness from a few millimetres up to a maximum of 4 metres.
The Redcastle field contains thirty five named reefs and mines (O’Shea et al., 1992; Edwards et al., 1998). It lies within the outcrop of Upper Silurian McIvor Sandstone and Lower to Upper Silurian Dargile and Broadford Formations. The field produced 11 489 tonnes at 29.8 g/t recovered for over 11000 oz’s of Gold. Though the Stibnite was of good quality no company has previously constructed a plant to recover the Stibnite.
The main producers listed in below:
Welcome Reef with production of 8.8 kg gold, 282 oz.
Mary Ann Reef with production of 2.5 kg gold, 80 oz.
Leviathan Reef with production of 2.1 kg gold, 67 oz.
The gold production for this field is taken from Edwards et al. (1998)
Remaining infrastructure on site include one vertical shaft and head frame, the winder room and storage/workshop shed are still intact and in good condition. The site has a large amount of clear hard stand area. The local area is a sparse woodland of mainly Iron Bark (Eucalyptus tricarpa) with very little under growth.
This Project is held under a Prospecting License PL006415.