Exploration License (EL6331) is located 30km west of Albury and covers an area of ~368km2 over the historical Chiltern and Rutherglen goldfields. Historical gold production from this area up until 1920 is estimated at approximately 1.4Million ounces. Most production came from underground mining of rich (5 – 11.6 g/m2 : Bulletin 62 Geological Survey of Victoria) ancient placer deposits along palaeo river systems, buried beneath unconsolidated sediments, that were located through crude auger drilling. Mined palaeo river deposits were up to 100 – 300m wide and several kilometres long. Subsequently minor amounts of gold have been produced from tailings retreatment and small-scale mining. Figure 2 displays historical mined palaeo river systems and potential unmined components of the same river system. Geophysics will be used to locate and extend potentially mineralised river systems buried beneath up to 100metres of unconsolidated sediments and provide drill targets.
Figure 3 displays an example of association of the historically mined river system, and interpreted unmined river beds, with wide spaced (200m line spacing) aeromagnetics. There are other examples of this throughout the exploration license. Preliminary assessment indicates many parts of the historically mined, and interpreted unmined, portions of the palaeo river systems have potential for discovery of new gold resources.
Gladiator sees opportunity to use targeted and more detailed magnetics, and other geophysical methods such as resistivity, to locate and delineate palaeo rivers and define drill targets for testing and potential resource definition. This style of deposit allows conventional earth moving to remove the unconsolidated overburden and simple mineral processing to recover the gold.
All the rivers that have drained the exposed Ordovician sediments at both Rutherglen and Chiltern have contained gold so there is every likelihood that newly identified river systems may be similarly mineralised.
The Company currently has the Rutherglen Project under option which grants Gladiator a 12-month window to assess more fully the potential of each license by expending a minimum $150,000 on the Project over the 12-month option period.
Figure 1: Chiltern – Rutherglen Goldfield showing historical production details after Canavan (1988), bore hole locations, historic shafts and mined lead areas.
Figure 2: Location of historically mined Ancient Placer deposits, and apparent terminations, over Digital Elevation Model DEM.
Figure 3: Association of historically mined placer deposits (shown in white) with wide spaced (200m line spacing) aeromagnetics. Potential 25km of unmined river beds (yellow dashed) require validation and follow up.
