Ann: 12kms of Witswatersrand conglomerate target identified, page-60

HAVE Australian gold miners missed a trick with the Witwatersrand-style “conglomerate gold” story playing out in the Pilbara region of Western Australia and starring Novo Resources and Artemis Resources?
Cashed-up mid-tier Australian gold miners seeking growth opportunities in Australia – eschewing the risks of going offshore – will be watching very closely as Novo and Artemis’ big work programs get underway.
Notionally at least any big North American-funded success in the Australian gold miners’ own backyard would be embarrassing for ASX gold executives and their business development and exploration teams.
At this stage Novo and Artemis’ success in the Pilbara is very much a notion in itself.
Trenching has just begun, with diamond drilling to start next week and large diameter RC drilling pegged for mid-October.
However, unlike its Australian peers, North American gold miner Kirkland Lake Gold has already seen enough for it to think it worth the exploration risk of backing the venture, tipping in C$56 million earlier this month for a stake in Novo.
Another strong – and earlier – backer of the venture has been high profile Canadian investment firm Sprott.
Kirkland Lake Gold and Sprott have associations, with Eric Sprott chairman of the Canadian-Australian gold miner.
Interestingly an earlier backer of Novo and its geological concept in the Pilbara, Newmont Mining, recently sold many of the shares it held in the explorer late last month.
Newmont, which acquired 17.76 million shares in Novo back in Sept 12 2013, divested 11.8 million shares on Aug 31 for C$19 million, with the 5.9 million left equating to about 5%.
Less than a week later Kirkland arrived on the scene.
It would be fair to guess Australian miners and explorers would have been as much surprised by Kirkland’s arrival with big bags of cash as wholly unsurprised by Newmont’s divestment.
Scepticism reigns supreme in ASX circles.
A common sentiment from those contacted was along the lines that while nuggets have long been found in this part of the world, no significant mine of scale has ever emerged.
“For an alluvial deposit to be large, then the primary source [also] has to have been very large,” a successful exploration geologist told MNN.
“There’s gold in the Pilbara but the primary sources are not known to be of the scale required for a huge alluvial deposit to form.
“The pessimist would say that the flat ‘watermelon seed’ shaped nuggets in the Archaean conglomerate are just similar to any old regular high turbulence alluvial play – just very old [Archaean] and now consolidated into a hard sediment and preserved.”
On the other hand, it was also pointed out by another geologist – who is also a leading buy side investment analyst – that geologists, like professionals in all walks of life, can be “susceptible to standard paradigms”.
In other words, if significant gold has been established as being typically greenstone hosted in the Yilgarn region of WA, that is where explorers go looking for more.
Similarly, a lack of gold exploration in the Pilbara lessens the chances of significant gold being found, and continues proving the paradigm true.
On Novo’s website, the company trumpets “a new paradigm in gold exploration and investing”.
The ASX gold world, in particular, awaits.