Tindarey EL 6415

EL 6415 covers an area of 150 square kilometers and is located 40 km north of Cobar. The sealed road to Bourke passes through the EL and local tracks provide reasonable access through generally flat ground that supports a few cattle. The EL occupies the eastern margin of the Cobar Basin, part of a Siluro-Devonian rift System and covers portion of the prospective Cobar Supergroup Fm and the underlying Girilambone Group. It lies at the northern end of the well-defined corridor of mineralisation hosting a number of world-class deposits such as the C.S.A. and the Great Cobar mines.

Ausmon’s target is for gold-silver/base metal deposits of Cobar type and Mt Drysdale type (rich shoots with up to 600 g/t Au and 2,000 g/t Ag) in the basal Cobar Supergroup lithologies such as the Merrere Conglomerates, which may be a possible hydrothermal breccia with excellent potential for mineralisation; it hosts some of the old gold mines. It has similarities with the Mt Drysdale Conglomerate in which the Mt Drysdale gold mine is located. Of the two rich shoots at Mt Drysdale, the main shoot, with values up to 30 oz Au/t was 12 m long, the second shoot, with values to 4 oz Au/t, did not outcrop, being found at the 85 m level.

Recent exploration models such as at the Endeavor Mine highlight the margins of the Cobar Basin as a favourable structural setting for mineralisation and the deeper parts of the Basin, which have had little exploration, may host mineralisation that does not have surface expression.

Within the EL, reinterpretation of the airborne magnetics has defined a number of new targets. Four prospective magnetic anomalies ‘thumb prints’ have been located to the east and south of the Mt Merrere and Golconda fields. A magnetic high/high-ground area lies in the west near Darling Downs. The interpreted aeromagnetic shears within the EL are likely conduits for hydrothermal mineralisation, as are the inferred buried intrusives.

The tenement also includes small but high-grade gold prospects in broad areas of stockworking or in extended veining in ironstone and quartz close to a granite contact. Old workings within the tenement include:

• The Golconda Mine; a chloritic shear zone with patches of silicification and brecciation. Five shafts and various pits and costeans tested a quartz vein stockwork within a shear that is 50-200 m wide and 400 m long. Sampling returned grades up to 4 g/t Au, 9.5 g/t Ag. Small but spectacular gold parcels were produced from 1896-1905. The best values are limited to a 50 m zone.
• Chesney’s Folly; shallow gold pits close to or on the granite sediment contact.
• NW Corner Prospect; Pb/Cu pits associated with pyritic quartz in Tinderra Granite
• Tinderra Tank; shallow Au/Ag workings in intrusive veins and stockworks close to the contact between granite and Girilambone sediments. The granite in the area is greisenised and characterized by gossanous quartz in the foliation that may have elevated Au and basemetal values.
• Mt Merrere Goldfield; where gold was worked from discrete quartz veins. Burtons Mine returned values up to 274 g/t Au and 840 g/t Ag from a parcel of 0.2 t in 1882. At the Lone Hand Mine the Inspector of Mines in 1918 reported a crosscut at the 30 m level carried 3.8 g/t Au.
• Minor workings on ironstones or laterite. The Clarke workings dating from around 1905 include a shaft to 23 m with anomalous base metal and Au values (to 1g/t Au)