The Gap Zone

Why does the ‘Gap Zone’ exist?

Several consortiums & companies ran the Morning Star mine since its gold was first mined at nearby Gooley's Creek in 1861. The first consortium formed around 1886, which was much like a co-op of local prospectors, was called The Morning Star Mine Co. Ltd. Among the operators over the years was the Morning Star's major owner Gold Mines of Australia (Western Mining). WMC had been successfully mining for rich returns since the late 1920’s, working their way down through the ‘dyke’ or host rock containing repetitive gold bearing quartz reefs. Their success had included massive returns (greater than 100,000 ounces per level) of high grade gold from famous reefs such as "Burns" around Levels 5 & 6 and "Whitelaw's" around Levels 5 & 7.

The catastrophic "Black Friday" Bush Fires of January 1939 wiped out the whole town of Woods Point and the entire above ground infrastructure at the Morning Star mine. The resultant lack of infrastructure, coupled with the outbreak of World War II which took away many miners, caused WMC to cease mining at the Levels 7 to 9 underground and instead re-commence exploration activity, sinking the shaft as fast & deep as possible looking for the most accessible quartz reefs with a skeleton team. Between Levels 16-19 underground, WMC found and mined the famous ‘Achilles’ Reef & Exeter Stope, which was one of the richest single reefs ever mined in Australia yielding over 250,000 ounces of gold. Achilles was also notable from a Grade Factoring perspective as drill assays averaged around 2g/t, whilst production topped 27g/t Gold!

WMC continued operating the Morning Star mine between Levels 19 & 23 - with small forays only above the Level 16 - until late 1959, when low Gold prices (fixed at USD35oz), the high cost of electricity (as Woods Point was not yet on the Victorian state grid) & their hunger for W.A. nickel led them to close all gold mining operations in the Eastern states. Consequently, the Morning Star mine was shutdown & never mined between Levels 9 & 15 underground leaving what we believe is a huge ‘gap’ zone of potentially rich dyke. Our exploration resource target for this ‘Gap Zone’ is between 1.5mm- 2 mm ounces. This target is assumed looking at the tonnage of dyke, the number of repetitive quartz reefs known to exist and the historical returns of gold ounces per vertical metre within the mine, which is 2000-5000 ounces per metre.

For a recent graphic of drilling from the 9L in the 'Gap Zone' of the Morning Star mine, please open the PDF below. 

Gap Zone Drilling - Q1 2008 (0.57 Mb)

 

For a summary of Highlighted Assays in Q1 2008, please click here:   Q1 2008 Drilling Highlights (491.97 Kb)

 

And this is a summary of drilling over Q1 and Q2 2008:     GAP ZONE DRILLING UPDATE - JULY 2008 (0.69 Mb)