Mining

Barton Gold hard at drilling just three weeks after ASX listing

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By Robin Bromby - 
Barton Gold ASX BGD Tarcoola Project drilling Perseverance Mine

Barton managing director Alexander Scanlon says there is significant potential for a discovery across the 14km Tarcoola corridor.

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Barton Gold (ASX: BGD) is not letting the grass grow under its feet with the drill bit now driving below the surface at its historic Tarcoola project in South Australia.

The priority targets include the newly discovered Perseverance West gold zone, which was identified last year as part of Barton’s pre-IPO work at Tarcoola, which once hosted numerous operating gold mines between 1900 and 1955.

Perseverance West is located near the site of the more recent brownfield open pit Perseverance mine which was worked in 2017 and 2018.

The hits at Perseverance in 2020 included 4m at 6.85 grams per tonne gold from 28m down hole and 2m at 4.3g/t from 29m.

Deliverance prospect also to be drilled

Last year’s drilling also found multiple southern and down-dip extensions of the Deliverance target — which will be drilled in the current program — including 7m at 7.75g/t from 95m, 2m at 15.07g/t and 3m at 33.7g/t.

Barton listed on 28 June after its oversubscribed $15 million initial public offering, the offer being closed just five days after opening.

The rig will drill about 5,100m at the Tarcoola project, and then move 70km to Barton’s Tunkillia project where there is a JORC resource.

The drilling contractor is SA-based Bullion Drilling, which worked at Tarcoola late last year as Barton prepared its listing plans.

Surrounding ground never properly tested

Barton managing director Alexander Scanlon said the company is focusing on some of the highest priority targets identified by the 2020 drilling, and through structural and geophysical analyses.

“The company believes that there is significant new discovery potential across our new 14km Tarcoola target corridor,” he added.

“Last year’s discovery of the new Perseverance West gold zone validated our thesis that the immediate vicinity and extents of the Perseverance mine were not adequately tested.”

Barton has a total attributable 1.1-million-ounce resource, being 28 million tonnes at 1.2 grams per tonne gold. It also owns the only regional gold mill in the central Gawler Craton of South Australia at Challenger.

The Tarcoola project lies near the junction of the transcontinental and Darwin railway lines and, 70km to the south, there is the unmined Tunkillia project.

Tarcoola until 1956 was South Australia’s major hard rock gold mine, producing 77,000oz at an average 37.5 grams per tonne.

Mining resumed at Tarcoola in 2017 when the former WPG Resources worked the Perseverance open pit and hauled ore to the Challenger mill, but the company went into receivership in 2018.