Godolphin Resources has picked up some highly anomalous gold sniffs at its historic Lewis Ponds project about 15km east of Orange, NSW, in the venerated Lachlan fold belt, with the assay numbers swaying the company to now focus its exploration attention on gold at the project.
Lewis Ponds is adjacent to the Lewis Ponds fault, a splay of the Godolphin fault that hosts Regis Resources’ open-pittable, two-million-ounce McPhillamys gold deposit, which is currently the subject of a development application and located about 20km south of the historic Lewis Ponds mine.
The Lewis Ponds area was an active mining centre from the early 1800s until the 1920s and the historic workings were centred around the Lewis Ponds and Tom’s mines. It hosts pre-existing base metals massive sulphide mineralisation with associated precious metals, including a potential late-stage gold overprint.
Historical mining, drilling and exploration at Lewis Ponds predominantly targeted base metals and were not overly bothered with assays for gold. In a new reconnaissance program, Godolphin collected 31 soil samples from an area south of the historic Tom’s mine, 800m south of the former Lewis Ponds mine.
The samples were collected to verify an old soil survey that showed anomalous base metals, however, gold was not assayed for at the time.
The company says results from its soil survey confirm the high historical base metals values and reveal high gold in soils of up to 2.3 grams per tonne with the top five samples returning more than 100ppb gold, which it says suggests prospectivity for McPhillamys-style gold mineralisation.
Spurred on by the encouraging gold sniffs in soils, Godolphin plans to expand the soil survey to test a larger area previously untested for gold.
Godolphin Chief Executive, David Greenwood said: “Lewis Ponds is extremely prospective for gold with strong similarities to the McPhillamys project to the south. These initial soil survey results with up to 2.3 g/t gold in soils confirm excellent gold prospectivity.”
“Godolphin is currently extending the soil survey grid area and we look forward to defining highly prospective drill targets once the soil survey is fully completed.”
Lewis Ponds is not a new discovery and has probably been thought of at various stages over the past 100 years as a base metals proposition – albeit possibly with gold and silver credits. By unveiling some exceptional grade gold values in the surface soils in an area not previously assayed for gold, Godolphin has decided to turn the historic project into a gold play and concentrate its exploration efforts on the precious metals prospectivity in the region.
Probably not a bad idea with the gold price hovering dangerously close to the US$2,000 an ounce mark.
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