Bush Diary
July 2017
Mt Zephyr recon field trip. Harry, Matt at work on BIF outcrop and the 'subtle' subcrop zones.
October 2017
-
Goldfields prospector Dave Evans pegged the first nickel claim in WA at Comet Vale in 1961, where he mined scheelite and gold. In the 1930s he would take the community to dances at Menzies on this truck. He later mined beryl, columbite, chrysoprase and prase jade. Chrysoprase occurs throughout the KNP, with AusJade now having rights to Ardea’s Yerilla district chrysoprase. The truck was also used to pull and cart sandalwood. -
Ardea Resources presented at the Australian Nickel Conference 17th October, and fielded a great deal of interest in the KNP.
June 2017
Black Range Cobalt Project
May 2017
Logging Lewis Ponds core for PFS met program. Matt and Vicky on site Orange, still hard at work with sun setting in background.
First cobalt core hole completed at Goongarrie South, KNP Cobalt Zone. Ongoing core drill program will be focussed on cobalt and will generate representative samples for developing the KNP Cobalt Zone metallurgical flow-sheet.
March 2017
Lewis Ponds, First diamond drill hole at Lewis Ponds, successfully intercepted 50m Massive, banded and stringer zinc sulphide.
February 2017
Ardea personnel have been busy getting drill sites ready at KNP Cobalt, Lewis Ponds, and Mt Zephyr, to facilitate start of exploration programs on ASX listing.
-
High grade cobalt-nickel at Black Range: Facing north, this rock overhang has high grade mineralization exposed as the dark yellow mustard-coloured clay. The existing Black Range RC drill-holes are up to 400 metres apart, so we need to do in-fill drilling to work out where we site our metallurgical core holes. -
Sampling old gold mines at Ghost Rocks: Facing northwest, the old workings are running in all directions, the mine mullock seems less in volume than what you would expect for such deep shafts and best of all, not an old drill hole to be seen anywhere. All the ingredients for a bulk tonnage stockwork gold system. -
Lewis Ponds regional recce: Facing north, a bit scary at a location outside Ardea tenure but along strike from Lewis Ponds, we are standing on an outcrop of sericite-altered volcanics, no quartz veining or obvious mineralization, but our rock chip samples contain gold. Showed us we need to do a lot more gold work at Lewis Ponds, including re-sampling old drill core. An unexpected extra work load, but the returns if our hunches are right make it all worthwhile. -
Lorne siting drill holes at Lewis Ponds: Facing northwest, old limestone flux quarry for the 1900s Lewis Ponds smelter. Note the folds in the highly sheared limestone behind Lorne, its called “Z” vergence, shows we are on the eastern limb of a correct facing anticline and the drill holes need to inclined to the west. -
Planning Lewis Ponds drilling: Facing northeast into the Lewis Ponds Creek valley, with Australia’s first ever gold discovery at Ophir in the background. On 12 February 1851 Edward Hargraves, with John Lister, found five specks of gold in Lewis Ponds Creek. Perhaps this alluvial gold was shed from Ardea hard rock Lewis Ponds tenure. -
Dust devil Mt Zephyr: A zephyr is supposed to be a light wind, not like this dust devil. Mt Zephyr country is flat and featureless and highly weathered, probably reflecting intense shearing and alteration along the east side of the Celia Shear Zone. This featureless country has some the best soil gold anomalies we have seen (1163ppb at Easter Well, 273ppb at Gale), never RC drilled, unbelievable for this part of the world. -
Locating old drill holes at Taurus: Usual story, we have some 19 holes in our data base and there must be 60 scattered around Taurus, probably from 30 years ago. Only option is to find the old sample piles and sample what we can, and then decide where to drill.
