Gidgee
The Gidgee Project is located 640 kilometres northeast of Perth in central Western Australia. The area covers portions of the Gum Creek Greenstone Belt west of the Montague Range. The greenstone belt hosts a number of significant gold deposits to the north and east of the project area including Wilsons, Swan Bitter, Kingfisher, and Wahoo. These deposits were mined via a series of open cut and underground operations with ore hauled to and processed at the Gidgee Gold Mine plant. The mine operated from the late 1980s until 2003 producing in excess of one million ounces of gold.
The Gidgee Project has undergone significant exploration for gold in the past with much of the project area having been covered by drilling and surface geochemical sampling. Of note is that much of this drilling is relatively shallow (<50m) and may not have effectively or completely tested areas which are deeply weathered. In addition, areas of deep weathering and surface cover of alluviual/colluvial material surface geochemistry may have not been effectively drilled.
The majority of exploration in the Gidgee project area has been focussed on gold exploration. However more recently Legend Mining has identified the potential of the belt to host “Kambalda-Style” Ni sulphide mineralisation. Legend completed drilling and geophysics in the east of the project area identifying what are interpreted to be komatiites with anomalous Ni values of up 0.7% Ni. Ultramafic units which may be komatiitic basalts have been mapped and interpreted in several areas throughout the project. These areas still probably require systematic exploration and evaluation.
