Projects

Victoria Gold Fields, Australia

Property Overview

The Company is exploring three licences, Murtoa, Ararat South and Dundonnell, totaling 120 km of the corridor length, representing all ground outside of a 50 km buffer around the Stawell Gold Mine. In addition to greenfields opportunities, more advanced targets exist including the 10 kilometre-long Murtoa target, which surrounds the Kewell gold resource. Northgate acquired its position in the Victoria Goldfields with its takeover of Perseverance Corporation Ltd. in early 2008. With this takeover, Northgate acquired two operating mines at Fosterville and Stawell. With Northgate's exploration teams focused in and around its two operating mines, they turned to Kiska to help advance the 870 sq. km land package in the Stawell Corridor. Kiska will systematically evaluate the entire package in order to narrow down targets for further and more detailed exploration.

The land position encompasses much of the Stawell Corridor. Victoria Goldfields have been a prolific gold producer for the State of Victoria, Australia, accounting for approximately 75% of the total gold production in the state. Multiple grass-roots targets identified using multi-disciplinary approach around defined gold resource.

The exploration model for the corridor has been extensively studied, providing exploration criteria at both the regional and detailed scales. Kiska will have access to Northgate's Stawell Gold Mine (SGM), which anchors Northgate's position in the 240 kilometre-long belt. This access will help build a better understanding of the geological model and improve Kiska's exploration effectiveness. The deal is structured similarly to other Kiska/Northgate arrangements in which Kiska undertakes to advance exploration to the point where drill targets are defined, at which time Northgate can take over funding of exploration, earning a larger percentage in the property for doing so.

High quality targets with convincing similarities to SGM exist in the land package being made available to Kiska. Previous work programs were well designed, identifying numerous targets that have yet to be brought to the drill-ready stage, however, insufficient resources were available to the predecessor company to conduct systematic greenfields exploration of the entire land package.

2012 Exploration Program

In 2012, Kiska drilled 2,181.5 m of aircore in twelve holes to the bedrock surface to test for anomalous gold and pathfinder geochemistry below the cover sequence. The aim of the 2012 aircore drill program on the Murtoa property was to test two of the nine best targets defined by work done by Kiska from 2009 to present. The targets are in covered terrain and are defined using multiple independent geological, geochemical and geophysical vector methods.

The Company is now seeking a partner to advance exploration at the Murtoa property and systematically test the targets generated in previous programs.

2011 Exploration Program

During 2011, the Company completed ground-based geophysics (induced polarization, audio magnetotelluric, and gravity surveys) and geochemical sampling programs on these properties.

Highlights

Past work on the Stawell Corridor ELs has identified some large-scale targets, however funding for Northgate's predecessors exploration in the district was limited and a systematic evaluation was not completed on the entire land package. A strong model to guide exploration in the district does exist. Some key characteristics that make for favourable targeting criteria include the use of geophysics (gravity and magnetics surveys) to define basalt centres and granites that are associated with mineralization in the corridor. Another key is the presence of gold at surface in geochemical surveys or alluvial (placer) deposits or gold found in the subsurface via RAB drilling.

Some excellent targets that resemble the Stawell Gold Mine do exist:

Murtoa: Buried target identified by geophysical techniques. Covered by 100 metres of overburden, largely untested except for an area of 25 drillholes that has highlighted a historic resource reported to be 100,000 ounces at 6 g/t gold. This resource (covering an area roughly 800 by 550 metres, has not been included in the agreement, but Kiska has access to all of the ground surrounding the resource).

Westmere Dome Target: 12 km by 2 km gravity feature, with basalt centre indicated by drilling. Anomalous gold in drilling, with only 17 holes over the entire 12 km of the target.

Dundonnell: 5 km long by 2 km wide gravity target. Basalt indicated by drilling, anomalous gold in drillholes. Very little drilling over length of target.

Geology

The Stawell corridor is a 240 km long belt of highly deformed and metamorphosed volcanic-sedimentary stratigraphy cored by the Stawell Gold Mine (Northgate Minerals - 5 million oz) that produces approximately 100,000/annum at a grade of 8 g/t. The corridor is situated in a Paleozoic fold and thrust belt, bounded on the west by the major terrane-bounding Moyston Fault and on the east by the Coongee Break. Rocks to the east of the break are composed of simply folded turbidites (hosting the Bendigo-Ballarat gold belt) while those in the Stawell corridor include intensely deformed steeply dipping schists. The deposit area stratigraphy ideally consists of accumulations of basaltic rock, or so called basaltic domes, draped in ferruginous (iron-rich) volcanogenic sediments overlain by pelitic schists (shales). This stratigraphic arrangement is considered to represent a failed VMS type setting developed at these isolated basalt centres. Subsequent deformation has structurally prepared the belt and lead to the formation of crustal scale structures. Orogenic mineralization at the Stawell mine is dated at 440 Ma and consists of gold bearing quartz vein systems that occur largely within the volcanogenic sediments that wrap around the western flank of the large, doubly plunging Magdala basalt antiform. Gold accumulation is thought to be developed where these dilational zones and fluids interact with the ferruginous sediments.

Maps

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