Rimfire Portfolio - Victoria Gold Fields, Australia
Highlights
- The opportunity to explore a highly productive gold belt in a politically stable jurisdiction. 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.
- Excellent greenfield exploration opportunities. The exploration model for the corridor has been extensively studied, providing exploration criteria at both the regional and detailed scales. Rimfire 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 Rimfire's exploration effectiveness.
- High quality targets with convincing similarities to SGM exist in the land package being made available to Rimfire. 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.
- The deal is structured similar to other Rimfire/Northgate arrangements in which Rimfire 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.
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Current Exploration Program
Rimfire is currently compiling data for the project in preparation for work programs to be conducted in the third and fourth quarters of 2008.
Opportunity
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 Rimfire to help advance the 870 sq. km land package in the Stawell Corridor. Rimfire will systematically evaluate the entire package in order to narrow down targets for further and more detailed exploration.
The strong relationship Rimfire and Northgate have built through the exploration of the RDN property in British Columbia and exploration alliances conducted in Yukon Territory is the basis for this agreement. This relationship has enabled Rimfire to access Northgate's dominant land position in a major gold belt on very reasonable terms - something that most junior companies would not have access to.
Property Status
Rimfire can earn a 50% interest in each of the three exploration licences (ELs) by spending a total of $370,000 in the first year to maintain the ELs. After the first year of work, Rimfire may opt to continue on any or all of the ELs, and then must conduct $500,000 in exploration per licence over two years. Northgate then has three options: 1) earn back a 10% interest by funding the next $1.5 million per licence and a further 10% (for a total of 70%) by reaching a production decision; 2) not participate and allow Rimfire to earn a 100% interest by funding the next $2 million over four years; or 3) participate in a 50/50 joint venture.
Exploration 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 Rimfire 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.
