Jundee
Fortis' Jundee Project lies in the northern part of the Yandal Belt, an Archaean NNW striking greenstone succession flanked by Archaean aged granitoids. The belt hosts several major gold deposits including the Jundee-Nimary deposits (>7Moz Au) and the Bronzewing Deposit (>2Moz Au). The northern part of the Fortis? Jundee project area lies six km southwest of the established Jundee-Nimary Gold Mine which has produced in excess of 5 million ounces of gold from open pit and underground operations since 1995. A number of other smaller gold deposits lie several kilometres to the east of Fortis? Jundee project including Elliot, Area7, Henry Ward and Gourdis-Vause which have been previously mined as small open pit operations. The geology of the project area is dominated by tholeiitic and high magnesium basalts, cherts and banded iron formations of the Moilers mafic sequence in the west, by dacitic to andesitic volcanics and volcaniclastic rocks interbedded with basalts and ferriginous cherts of the Nimary felsic sequence in the central parts, and by the ultramafics, high magnesium basalts, tholeitic basalts, interbedded sediments, layered dolerite sills and dacitic to granodioritic porphyry intrusions of the Jundee mafic sequence in the east.
The bulk of historic exploration work on the Jundee project area has targeted gold mineralisation, with most work focussed on the Jundee mafic sequence rocks. Previous explorers have completed extensive shallow RAB drilling on 640m spaced lines or less, covering the majority of the project area. However some of this drilling may have been too shallow (ie not successfully testing saprolite or bedrock) or too wide spaced and thus not effective. Drilling has identified a number of geochemical targets that require further work to evaluate. In addition there are a number of structural and conceptual targets that warrant further testing. The stratigraphy of the project area is poorly understood and further work to interpret this may enhance prospectivity.
There is potential within the Jundee project area for polymetallic Volcanic Hosted Massive Sulphide deposits (VHMS). Reconnaissance exploration programmes were carried out in the late 1970s and early 1980s targeting this style of mineralisation. However since the discovery of the world class Jundee-Nimary Gold project in the 1990s, the major focus of exploration and the vast majority of work completed in the area has been exploring for gold. More recently Aragon Resources carried out limited exploration around the Popes Bore area (using IP and EM geophysical techniques) targeting VHMS style mineralisation. The Nimary felsic sequence appears to have some similarities to the lithologies hosting the Jaguar and Teutonic Bore VHMS deposits which lie 200km to the south. The Jaguar/Teutonic Bore deposits are hosted within andesitic to basaltic submarine volcanics underlain by a large rhyolite body. Similar lithological associations appear to be present within the Nimary Felsic sequence.
