Christmas Gift Project, NSW
The Christmas Gift Gold Project is 100% owned by Tarrina Resources and comprises Exploration Licences EL 9615 and EL 9683, covering approximately 22 km² in the Lachlan Orogen of New South Wales, one of Australia’s premier gold provinces that hosts several major orogenic gold deposits and advanced exploration projects.
Located approximately 15 km east of Cootamundra and 180 km northwest of Canberra, the project hosts a historically mined high-grade gold system with significant exploration upside along strike and at depth.
Historic underground mining at Christmas Gift produced approximately 30,000 oz of gold at an average grade of ~18 g/t Au from a relatively small footprint extending only around 225 m along strike and to approximately 110m depth. Despite the high-grade production history, exploration beneath and beyond the historic workings has been limited, highlighting the potential for extensions to the known mineralised system down dip and at depth.
Historic drilling beneath and along strike from the mine workings defined broad zones of gold mineralisation associated with quartz veining, sulphide mineralisation and alteration typical of orogenic gold systems. Importantly, only a limited number of deeper drill holes have historically tested below 150 m depth, with both intersecting gold mineralisation, supporting the potential for the system to continue at depth.
Recent exploration by Tarrina has applied modern geological interpretation, geophysics, drilling and geochemical techniques to better define the broader scale potential of the system. A six-hole diamond drilling program completed for 1,180m confirmed the presence of gold mineralisation associated with zinc and copper sulphides, supporting the use of zinc and copper as pathfinder elements for future targeting. Drilling also intersected new mineralised zones north of the historic mine area, supporting the interpretation that the system extends along the north-northwest structural trend beyond the historical workings.
The first assay results from the drilling program confirmed high-grade gold mineralisation beneath the historic Christmas Gift mine, including:
• 14.5m at 2.23 g/t Au from 58m, including 0.75m at 23.12 g/t Au
• 16.4m at 2.06 g/t Au from 75.6m, including 2.64m at 10.49 g/t Au
These intersections confirmed broad zones of gold mineralisation adjacent to historic mine workings and represent the widest and strongest gram-metre intersections recorded at the project to date.
Regional auger soil sampling and pXRF analysis combined with historic soil sampling define 33 geochemical exploration targets with coherent multi-line gold, zinc and copper soil anomalies for follow up exploration.
There are 11 high priority gold targets mapped, with the historic McLeod’s Shaft target standing out as a potential look-alike to the Christmas Gift mine area.
Discrete gold highly anomalous soil targets to the west of the Christmas Gift mine suggest there may be a subparallel zone of gold mineralisation that has not been tested by drilling to date.
The highest gold value of 1.83 g/t Au in the new soil sampling comes from an anomaly 2 km to the northwest of the Christmas Gift mine on the unexplored northern tenement that is a high priority for field checking.
The regional targets confirm that not only there is potential to grow the Christmas Gift gold project down dip and along strike but also through the discovery of new bed rock gold mineralisation to the south, north and west.
Historic high-grade gold intersections include:
- 13.0m at 13.20 g/t gold from 68m in DDH076;
- 8.0m at 17.23 g/t gold from 12m in FRB012;
- 9.0m at 11.54 g/t gold from 46m in DDHC007;
- 13.0m at 6.60 g/t gold from 30m in PDH22;
- 4.5m at 16.53 g/t gold from 12m in RAB84013;
- 4.0m at 16.80 g/t gold from 12m in RAB-623; and
- 7.0m at 7.97 g/t gold from 55m in XGRC001.
Tarrina continues to advance exploration at Christmas Gift through geological modelling, drilling and regional targeting programs designed to define extensions to known mineralisation and assess the broader scale potential of the project area.
