Barton Gold resumes drilling at Tarcoola project with sights set on new targets

Barton Gold (ASX: BGD) (OTCQB: BGDFF) has resumed its latest drilling program at the historic Tarcoola goldfield in South Australia.

After a short break, Barton is now moving ahead with the second stage of its Tarcoola campaign having recently completing 3,126 metres of reverse circulation (RC) drilling across the School, Old Flame, Perseverance North and Tolmer targets.

The program, which commenced in mid-May, is drilling approximately 7,000m with Barton looking to test new structural targets near the Perseverance mine.

Priority targets

Barton will now focus on the Tolmer, Mulgathing and Warburton targets during the final half of the program.

“We are excited to get drilling again on some of our highest priority targets for potential high-grade Tarcoola mineralisation,” managing director Alex Scanlon said.

“With priority samples already in the lab, we are aiming to complete this initial program quickly and then start preparing for potential follow-up drilling on these targets and others.”

The company is also using the current program to trial in-field use of Portable PPB’s DetectOre technology.

The CSIRO-invented technology has been developed to slash the time required to discover and develop a gold deposit.

Tarcoola potential

The current RC campaign is part of Barton’s plans to systematically test near-mine and regional targets to unlock the scale potential of Tarcoola, which was South Australia’s major hard rock gold producer during the early 1900s.

The brownfield Perseverance mine is surrounded by numerous historical high-grade shallow artisanal mines, with numerous historical high-grade workings producing some 77,000 ounces of gold bullion between around 1900 and 1955.

Initial test drilling around the Perseverance mine during 2020 yielded positive results, further validating the existing approximately 500m-long ‘Deliverance Target’ and discovering the shallow approximately 200m-long Perseverance West gold zone immediately adjacent to the Perseverance mine.

In late May 2024, Barton highlighted the potential upside of the Perseverance pit area with drilling in the pit floor returning hits of around 12 grams per tonne gold and identifying high-grade extensions of mineralisation.

Dual strategy

Tarcoola is one part of Barton’s dual project strategy, with the company also having recent exploration success around 70km away at the Tunkillia project.

Barton has engaged mining consultants GR Engineering Services and Mining Associates to undertake detailed scoping studies for Tunkillia.

The company also plans to follow up the study with a review of all technical data to determine the forward work program required to complete a pre-feasibility study.

The commencement of the Tunkillia scoping study comes after the project surpassed 1.5Moz in an updated mineral resource estimate earlier this year.