Giralia Resources

Ashburton Gold Province

Giralia's staff identified the prospectivity of the emerging Ashburton gold province in the late 1980s, and their considerable experience in the area has allowed the Company to build a strong tenement position, holding title to twelve exploration licences and applications with a total area of 1500 square kilometres. Gold exploration and mining activity in the Ashburton  includes the significant high-grade gold discovery at the Waugh prospect  which supplemented the Paraburdoo-Mount Olympus mining operations of Sipa Resources International NL ("Sipa"), and the development of the high-grade Paulsen's deposit (660,000 ounces). Additionally,  Newcrest Operations Ltd ("Newcrest") and Sipa in the central Ashburton, have defined several very large gold-arsenic anomalous zones,  including the "Cheela" and "Cairn Hill" anomalies include 17 metres @ 3.5 grams per tonne, 36 metres @ 2.2 grams per tonne and 14 metres @ 5.47 grams per tonne gold (Au).

Many comparisons have been drawn between the geology of the Ashburton and the giant Carlin goldfield in the USA, where production since discovery in the 1960s totals over 45 million ounces of gold from a 60 kilometre long trend, with a further 40 million ounces in defined reserves.

Giralia's high quality Ashburton ground position has attracted substantial joint venture offers from several of the world's largest gold miners. A major regional joint venture with La Mancha resources Australia Pty Ltd (an affiliate of the giant French company, Cogema) including the Angelo project and several  of the Company's other tenements, brings the total earn-in expenditure on Giralia's Ashburton properties to $4.7 million in 3 joint ventures covering 10 tenements.

 


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At the eastern end of the Ashburton, the Company's Angelo project covers 40 kilometres of strike extensions just east of Sipa's high-grade Waugh deposit (drill intersections include 16 metres @ 74 grams per tonne Au and 15 metres @ 57 grams per tonne Au). The Waugh deposit is located on the 'Diligence Dome', a geological structure that extends clearly onto Giralia's tenements. Additionally, the 'Nanjilgardy Fault zone', a major regional thrust fault, along which the Mt Olympus and Zeus ore bodies lie, is exposed for at least 15 kilometres into the Company's Angelo licences, and is interpreted from aeromagnetic data to project beneath cover for a further 20 kilometres.

 


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Other than several extremely widely spaced traverses of RAB drilling (between 5 and 9 kilometres apart) in the north-east of the Angelo tenements, there has been no drilling on Giralia's ground, and little gold exploration at all in the past 10 years.

 

At the western end of the belt, Giralia's Anthiby Well and Feed Bore tenements comprise a significant and integral portion of Newcrest/Sipa's Cheela discovery ('Electric Dingo' 17 metres @ 3.5 grams per tonne Au, 'Cheela West' 36 metres @ 2.2 grams per tonne Au), which has the potential to become another major gold camp. A 30 kilometre long gold anomaly has been defined at Cheela, of which the western 10 kilometres is located within Giralia's Anthiby Well tenement (subject to the Mt Wall joint venture with Newcrest/Sipa).

At the Anthiby Well prospect, past shallow drilling returned intersections of 6 metres @ 3.6 grams per tonne Au and 4 metres @ 5.2 grams per tonne Au, also on Giralia's tenement.

 


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Giralia's other Ashburton tenements include the Beasley River and West Beasley prospects on the Rocklea Dome. Both licences contain known gold mineralisation and alteration systems with many similarities to the high-grade Paulsen's deposit located in a very similar structural setting on the adjacent Wyloo Dome.