Included in this morning's ADN's exploration news in the Drummond Basin is an interesting little appendum describing the discovery of Pajingo. So whilst last week's initial results did not return anything terribly stellar at depth, some understanding of the nature of exploration into epithermal gold sytems can temper expectations:
I maintain that nothing yet done by either Anglo or Ventnor has precluded an unsuccessful campaign at Black Dragon. The early indications remain positive, notwithstanding risk in all these sorts of games.
Apologies that the cut and paste dropped the formatting.
"The Pajingo field was found by Battle Mountain in 1983 after the identification of epithermal veins led to the discovery of the Scott Lode, which produced 366,500 ounces of gold. In 1988, drilling at Vera North intersected 3 metres at 2.5g/t gold at a depth of 25 metres below surface. Some 16 holes were also drilled into the Nancy position without success. In 1991 the small Cindy deposit was discovered and was mined to produce 46,468 ounces of gold. The Cindy discovery sparked renewed interest in the field and in 1994, six years after the first holes were drilled at Vera North, a new hole hit 6 metres at 8.0g/t gold at a depth of 40 metres. Further drilling indicated a small resource of 40,000 ounces to a depth of 100 metres below surface. Although the Vera North resource was very small further drilling followed, with persistence attributed to several factors: • there was always at least one high grade intersection open at depth • the vein was hosted by a major structure with silicification and brecciation • breccias contained clasts of epithermal vein material, believed to be from deeper levels • funding was available and the Pajingo mill was hungry for feed. The 50th hole at Vera North intersected 5.8 metres at 23.1g/t and 6.4 metres at 8.5g/t gold some 250 metres below surface. Encouraged by these results, deeper holes were then drilled at Nancy, and in 1995 a hole intersected 7 metres at 29.1g/t gold. Drilling over the next six months confirmed that the shallow Vera North position, discovered in 1994, and having a strike length of less than 40 metres, was the tip of a major ore deposit that was semi-continuous between Vera North and Nancy over a length of 1.5 km. The Pajingo field has gone on to produce in excess of 3 million ounces of gold. "
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