The Golden Crown Project is located 20km east of the regional centre of Halls Creek in the Kimberley Mineral Field, Western Australia.

The tenement overlies portions of the contact between the Biscay (local basalt, sediments, volcaniclastics) and Olympio (local felsic volcanic / volcaniclastics and sediments) Formations, which is regionally anomalous in terms of the number of gold occurrences near the contact.
 

The tenement overlies portions of the contact between the Biscay (local basalt, sediments, volcaniclastics) and Olympio (local felsic volcanic / volcaniclastics and sediments) Formations, which is regionally anomalous in terms of the number of gold occurrences near the contact.

Geologically the project is located within the highly mineralised Halls Creek Mobile Belt which hosts the Nicholson’s gold deposit (60km west), Palm Springs gold deposit (3.5km southwest) the Savannah and Copernicus Nickel Mines, Argyle Diamond Mine, Koongie Park copper-zinc deposit and platinum / palladium mineralisation.

The Palm Springs gold mine (no longer operating) is situated along strike 3.5km to the southwest, where approximately 70,000oz Au was mined in the mid 1990’s. The Golden Crown project (Golden Crown and Faugh-a-Ballagh prospects) is located within an equivalent stratigraphic and structural setting to Palm Springs. Historic hard rock mining at Golden Crown was focussed on extracting higher grade quartz vein occurrences and alluvial prospecting. Approximately 1,100oz of gold production is recorded from the Golden Crown mine, with minor production from Faugh-a-Ballagh.

Previous explorers and Northern Star have completed numerous drill programs over the project, resulting in a JORC compliant Inferred Resource of 323,000t @ 3.2g/t Au for 33,600oz Au (Table 1). Figure 1 shows gold intercepts returned from drilling over the Golden Crown Prospect.

Table 1. Golden Crown / Faugh-a-Ballagh Resource at 1g/t Au cut-off grade. 

The deposits were estimated in a standard block model using Inverse Distance Squared (ID2) interpolations. The interpolations were constrained by resource outlines based on mineralisation envelopes prepared using a nominal 0.3g/t Au cut-off grade and geological contacts. The resource was estimated using high grade cuts ranging from 40 to 100 g/t, with some zones uncut. The estimate is reported with a 1g/t cut-off.

Further work is required to improve resource classification from Inferred to Indicated. Exploration targets exist on the tenement which require follow-up.