Infinity boosts NSW copper potential with historic gold mine find

Infinity Mining has identified a new gold target area, which includes the historic Sir Walter Scott gold mine, about 3 kilometres south of its Cangai copper project in northern New South Wales.

The old Sir Walter Scott mine was discovered in 1872, and during the late 1800s, it produced 1790 ounces of gold from 2203 tonnes of ore at an average grade of about 25 grams per tonne (g/t) gold.

The mineralisation in the old show is reported to occur in quartz-sulphide veins, hosted by steeply dipping chloritic shear zones within the Carboniferous Gundahl Complex. The complex consists of greywackes, metasediments and cherts, with minor limestone and basalts.

In the 1980s, Little River Goldfields and Key Resources conducted exploration at Sir Walter Scott, including rock chip sampling around the old workings, waste dumps and from nearby outcrops.

Those programs delivered several high-grade assays going up to 15.8g/t gold along a northwest trending zone for about 500 metres along strike, between Sir Walter Scott and near-neighbour Nova Resources’ John Bull gold project.

Grades to 7.08g/t gold were picked up in quartz-veined chert around the Sir Walter Scott shaft, and grades between 1.1g/t and 3.89g/t gold were recorded along about 500m of strike around the Sir Walter Scott workings.

A total of 12 rock chip assays better than 1g/t gold were reported around Sir Walter Scott out of a total of 32 samples collected.

Since the 1980s, limited modern exploration has been conducted around Sir Walter Scott and Infinity views the old show as offering a compelling target justifying further assessment.

The company’s research and historical data compilation has not revealed any drilling, geophysics or systematic exploration at the project since the 1980s.

With the area under-explored, Infinity initially figured that Sir Walter Scott could be an intrusion-related gold system. Novo thinks the same about its John Bull project, which is 3km along strike within a significant structural corridor to the northwest.

The delineation of a new gold target at the Cangai project from our recent work with potential for high-grade gold mineralisation adds more strength to our NSW portfolio. With gold prices at record highs, our planned field program will systematically assess the gold potential at Cangai, while we continue to further explore our high-grade copper system immediately to the north, at the old Cangai copper mine. Having both copper and gold targets at Cangai adds value to our portfolio.

Novo has a farm-in joint venture over John Bull with TechGen Metals. Recently completed soil sampling at the project has extended the known gold anomaly within a 1 part per billion contour to about 1.5km along strike, including a remarkable soil gold result of up to 1.59g/t.

Novo’s rock chip sampling also defined peak gold values to 67.9g/t and 29g/t gold from sheeted quartz veins within northeast and northwest trending structural zones in the region, pointing to possible further high-grade gold mineralisation.

The company planned to run a 1500m reverse circulation drilling program this month, subject to rig availability.

The anomalous gold exploration results at John Bull add some intriguing context to the potential of Infinity’s Sir Walter Scott gold prospect, which is 3km southeast along strike and has never been drilled.

Infinity has obtained publicly available LiDAR survey data over the central part of its Cangai project from the NSW Government.

LiDAR is a remote sensing method used to examine the earth’s surface. It measures distance by sending a short laser pulse and records the time taken for the reflected pulse to return.

LiDAR surveys produce highly accurate terrain images that can “see” through vegetation cover and easily resolve areas of historical surface activity, including small pits, excavations, tracks and infrastructure obscured by grass and bush. It is widely used in archaeological and mine pit surveys, and infrastructure and slope stability monitoring.

Infinity’s data was reprocessed to a 50cm resolution to create a bare-earth digital terrain model that revealed a northwest-trending cluster of shafts, pits and trenches over more than 500m of strike length along the northwest structural corridor, including the Sir Walter Scott and Beagley gold prospects.

Infinity’s flagship Cangai copper mine lies 3km north of Sir Walter Scott. It produced 4950 tonnes of copper, 52.7kg of gold and 1035kg of silver from 76,940t of ore, making it one of the highest-grade and most successful early 20th-century copper mines in NSW.

Infinity sees the multi-commodity copper-gold-silver character of Cangai as adding strength and diversity to its project. Having an untested historical high-grade gold mine on its doorstep is also a significant geological and potential economic bonus.

Infinity plans a field visit to its newly appreciated Sir Walter Scott gold target in the coming quarter to undertake preliminary geological mapping and surface geochemical sampling to verify historical rock chip results and ascertain strike continuities and controls. Its ongoing exploration program will be determined by these results.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@wanews.com.au