Leeds Project
The Leeds Project is located on the Norseman-Wiluna greenstone belt approximately 20km south of the Goldfields St Ives Mining Camp at Kambalda. The Leeds Project comprises two granted prospecting licences collectively covering a total area of 3.94km². The project occurs in the area hosted by the Black Flag volcano-sedimentary package of rocks that host the Junction, Argo, and Invincible gold deposits at the St Ives Gold Camp. More importantly, the Leeds Project is located very close to the regional Speedway Fault and the associated subsidiary structures that are widely known to be critical for the formation of various deposits at St Ives including invincible and Argo.
Figure 1: Location of Leeds Project in the prolific gold mining district of the Norseman-Wiluna greenstone belt.
Drilling by previous explorers has delineated a large gold mineralised system within the Leeds Project that has been interpreted in the past to be related to a north-northwest trending shear zone within a package of sedimentary and volcaniclastic rocks. The supergene mineralisation forms a flat-lying blanket 5 to 20m in thickness at between 40 and 50m depth beneath strongly depleted saprolitic clays with gold grade that ranges from 0.1g/t Au and up to 11.6g/t Au in places. Supergene mineralisation greater than 0.1g/t has been defined over a zone approximately 1.5km long and up to 400m wide.
Figure 2: Airborne magnetic image at the Leeds Project showing the historic collars and the outlines of intersected supergene (oxidised) and primary gold mineralisation, interpreted gold bearing shear zone, significant previous intersections and cross section location.
One standout drilling intersection occurs within the transitional zone between the oxidised and primary mineralisation and intersected:
17m at 5.7g/t Au from 94m in LRC001 including 2m at 40.9g/t Au
Other intersections from historic drilling returned both very high grade and large lower grade widths including:
4m at 17.5g/t Au from 74m in LRC004 (primary zone);
6m at 4.2g/t Au from 48m in PDR006 including 2m at 11.7g/t Au (supergene zone);
70m at 0.4g/t Au from 49m in LDRC013 including 1m at 4.2g/t Au (oxide & primary zone);
15m at 1.0g/t Au from 80m in LDRC009 including 1m at 11.6g/t Au (primary zone);
10m at 1.2g/t Au from 105m in LDRC004 including 1m at 9.0g/t Au (primary zone); and
28m at 0.5g/t Au from 79m in LFR027 including 1m at 4.9g/t Au (oxide & primary zone).
Previous exploration suggest that the Leeds Project sits on a large, primarily untested hydrothermally altered gold bearing shear zone at depth below an extensive zone of supergene gold mineralisation. Recent geological work by Ragnar indicates a well-defined hydrothermal alteration zonation pattern at depth. The core of the primary mineralised zone is characterised by strong quartz veining, variable silicification and 2-10% disseminated pyrite as well as strong tourmaline zone with rate fuchsite along the base coincident with the best gold assays.
Figure 3: Interpreted cross section through the northern area of the Leeds Project at 6,506,480N showing a well-defined alteration zonation pattern.