Highlights

• Located on a shear zone along strike regionally from Macraes Mine (>2 million oz production since 1990; 1.5 million oz reserves remaining)
• Exhibits two high grade vein structures
• Significantly the material between the vein structures contains low grade gold mineralisation analogous to that at the Macraes Mine
• Historic production of over 40,000 oz gold (Macraes historic production 15,000 oz gold)
• Resource estimate of 500,000 oz gold (non-JORC)

Located in Central Otago, New Zealand’s largest gold producing province, the Skippers-Macetown area produced historically between 116,500 and 256,500 oz gold and has only 2 drill holes completed to date to test for additional mineralisation at Tasman’s Bullendale mine. Extensive alluvial mining occurred from the 1860’s through to the 1990’s, however no large hard rock source of gold has been found that can account for the amount of alluvial gold won from the region.

The largest mine in the Skippers area was the Bullendale Mine, which produced approximately 40,000 oz gold from 3 km of workings on 9 mining levels from 1863. Mine production records from 1896 document that the ore yield averaged 37 g/t gold. Factors such as cost of timber, cartage costs and engineering problems associated with winding and pumping facilities led to eventual mine closure in the winter of 1907.

The mineralised zone consists of three roughly parallel quartz reefs that occur within a 30 to 35m wide deformation zone. This deformation zone consists of brecciated schist, massive quartz veins and stockworks. Vein margins are sheared and the resulting pug and proximal schist wallrock are variably mineralised. The ‘Main Reef Zone’ can be traced along strike for 1 km and down dip for 500m in the vicinity of the old workings, but has a postulated regional strike length of up to 4 km.

Rock chip sampling and drilling was carried out at the Bullendale Mine during 1996-97. Two diamond drill holes intersected the mineralised lode beneath old mine workings. Continuity of the low grade mineralisation envelope was confirmed. Most underground rock chip samples were in the range 0.5 to 1.5g/t gold with the highest being 52.3g/t gold from quartz reef material. Composite results included 15.13g/t gold over 3.8m, and 3.38g/t gold over 3.6m. Only low grade un-mined ore was sampled by this programme. In some instances, the host schist was shown to carry higher grade than the quartz lode which is a style of mineralisation that would have been missed by the historic miners.

No modern gold exploration has occurred along most of the line of strike. The project area is significantly anomalous on a regional scale for gold in rock chip and stream sediment samples. Mineralisation is dominantly controlled by NW and E trending shear zones producing wide (20m plus) alteration zones around quartz lodes.

Historic information suggests that the economic potential is at least as good as Macraes Flat, possibly better given the higher grades already encountered within this area and which were not encountered at Macraes Flat.

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