WA’s best prospector Mark Creasy is a Pilbara gold believer...

WA’s best prospector Mark Creasy is a Pilbara gold believer

Stuart McKinnonThe West Australian
Saturday, 2 December 2017 12:47PM
Stuart McKinnon

The Pilbara gold rush is on

1:48 | The West Australian

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Finance News Presenter Meilin Chew looks at the small miner hopefuls on the hunt for gold in WA's Pilbara.

It is a story that has divided the State’s mining community but WA’s most successful prospector says he is “cautiously optimistic” that the search for conglomerate-hosted gold in the Pilbara will yield a commercial resource.
Mark Creasy, who has had a hand in some of WA’s biggest mineral discoveries, including the Nova nickel deposit and the Jundee and Bronzewing gold finds, this week rejected reports he had abandoned exploring the Pilbara for conglomerate gold.
“I have never given up. I am still exploring the Pilbara for that type of gold,” he told WestBusiness.


Bullish talk of gold in the Pilbara has captured the imagination of prospectors and investors alike, prompting a spike in the sale of metal detectors in Karratha and sending share prices soaring and, more recently, tumbling.
Canada’s Novo Resources Corp and Artemis Resources have driven the story with the discovery of watermelon-seed shaped nuggets in shallow ground at their Purdy’s Reward joint-venture project south of Karratha.
The theory is that the Kaapvaal Craton in South Africa and the Pilbara Craton are geologically linked.
The former hosts the massive Witwatersrand Basin from which more than a third of the world’s gold has been mined.
It is hoped the Pilbara could host a similar resource.
Last week, Novo announced it was uncomfortable with wide-diameter drilling as an exploration technique and instead would focus on digging trenches and then mapping, analysing and sampling the exposed rock.
Mr Creasy agreed trenching would initially be the most effective way forward.
But for deeper exploration, a decline could be sunk down the mineralised horizon, which he believed would cost about $5000 a metre.
He noted the gold mineralisation at Purdy’s had appeared in outcropping, or visible at surface, and was shallow dipping so should be relatively low cost to begin mining.
“I can’t say whether there’s a payable resource there but it should be relatively easy to find out,” Mr Creasy said.
“I am never overly confident but I think the game is worthwhile.
“What the end result will be, we will have to wait and see.
“WA has been slightly depressed of late so it would be wonderful if a commercial resource existed.”
Mr Creasy holds shares in Novo, a majority stake in Coziron Resources and a small holding in De Grey Mining.