Special Report: Navarre’s recently completed maiden drilling program at the historical, high-grade Jubilee project has returned strongly anomalous gold grades.

Gold grades of up to 1.5 grams per tonne (g/t) were intersected above the three previously undrilled geophysical anomalies that were the subject of the company’s program.

These results have significantly expanded the footprint and robustness of the Jubilee project and are significant given that this is early stage reconnaissance drilling into the weathered top of the gold-bearing basement rocks.

With a routine field duplicate sample collected from one of the holes returning 1.5g/t gold versus an original assay of 0.1g/t gold, Navarre Minerals (ASX:NML) is now preparing to undertake a confirmatory assaying program involving selective 2kg bulk leach sampling to test for the presence of coarse gold.

The positive results to date have led the company to strengthen its footprint at Jubilee by applying for two adjacent exploration licences over the western side of the historical Ballarat Goldfield.

“We are excited to have completed our maiden air-core drilling program at the historical Jubilee Gold Mine, the first drilling in more than a century despite a history of yielding high-grade gold from a single transverse quartz reef structure,” managing director Ian Holland said.

“The drilling has detected strongly anomalous gold grades associated with quartz veining in oxidised basement rocks, above three geophysical anomalies thought to represent repetitions and extensions of the historically mined Jubilee quartz reef.”

navarre minerals jubilee gold mine targets
Jubilee perspective view showing reconstruction of historical mine workings (black), Jubilee Main Lode (red) and interpreted geophysical target areas (yellow & red dash). Pic: Supplied

He added that there is considerable potential for Navarre to outline a large-scale gold system at depth just 25km from an operating mine with significant processing capacity.

With $9.9m in cash at the end of December 2020, the company is looking to expand its regional drilling programs including step-out, infill and deeper drilling at Jubilee to define the extent of the mineralising system.

Jubilee project

The 122sqkm Jubilee project includes the historical 619m deep Jubilee gold mine that produced about 130,000oz of gold at a grade of about 12g/t from a single east-west trending quartz reef between 1887 and 1913.

Jubilee is believed to be one of the best shallow examples of a transverse ore system in Victoria with a similar structural setting to the 2.5moz Swan-Eagle orebody in Fosterville and the 1.8moz Tasmania Reef in Beaconsfield, Tasmania.

Despite this, no extraction or exploration is known to have occurred since the mine closed in 1913.

This article was developed in collaboration with Navarre Minerals, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.

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