Navarre Minerals starts drilling Jubilee gold project in the hope of discovering the next Fosterville
Navarre Minerals believes the historic Jubilee gold mine has a similar structural setting to the 2.5Moz Swan-Eagle orebody at Fosterville.
Victoria-focused Navarre Minerals (ASX: NML) has begun the much anticipated maiden drilling program across its Jubilee gold project, with the aim of firming up a “significant gold discovery” akin to the region’s next Fosterville mine.
The maiden 3,000m aircore drilling program is targeting three geophysical anomalies that Navarre anticipates are extensions of the high-grade Jubilee quartz reef, which was mined over a century ago and closed in 1913.
Navarre managing director Ian Holland said he was “excited” to be exploring the Jubilee gold project.
“The Jubilee mine has seen no real exploration in more than a century, despite a history of yielding high-grade gold from a single transverse quartz reef structure.”
Mr Holland added the project had the potential to “deliver a significant gold discovery” just 25km from LionGold Corp’s existing Ballarat gold operation with “significant processing capacity”.
Advancing Jubilee
Jubilee is located 25km southwest of Ballarat in Victoria and consists of one tenement covering 122 square kilometres.
Within the project is the historic 619m deep Jubilee gold mine, which produced about 130,000 ounces of gold at an average grade of 12 grams per tonne.
Ore was mined from a single east-to-west trending quartz reef.
Navarre noted that no significant exploration or drilling had been undertaken on the ground since the mine closed.
The company revealed last month, it had finalised its purchase of Jubilee, which was initially announced in June.
It had made a last $20,000 payment to the vendor and locked-in the exploration licence.
Prior to finalising the acquisition, Navarre compiled data and reviewed all historic information. It also conducted prospect mapping and surveyed geology and mine workings.
Geophysical surveys were undertaken to identify targets around the former mine.
Computer modelling of the information was also completed.
According to Navarre, the Jubilee reef is one of the best shallow examples of a transverse east-to-west ore systems in Victoria.
The company claims it has a similar structural setting to 2.5Moz Swan-Eagle orebody at Kirkland Lake Gold’s (ASX: KLA) Fosterville, which is Victoria’s largest gold mine.