Dart picks up serious gold/antimony sniffs in Victoria

Dart Mining has tabled some stellar gold and antimony sample results across its Tallandoon project near Albury-Wodonga in Northeast Victoria – some of which are from historic waste dumps that were mined between 1914 and 1945. The latest field program focussed on historic work sites spanning more than 3km of mineralised belt at Tallandoon with the best results including gold assaying as high as 12.7 grams per tonne and antimony levels reaching 4.35 per cent.

The company says the presence of high-grade gold alongside antimony is a common feature within the goldfields of Victoria, demonstrated by the nearby world-class Fosterville gold mine and Costerfield gold-antimony mine.

Dart’s Tallandoon licenses cover several historically productive areas, including the Carry On, Ellis and “The Antimony Mine” prospects.

Highlights from recent samples include a 6.1g/t gold result from Ellis, another 9.3g/t gold grab sample from “The Antimony Mine” and multiple high-grade antimony findings from Carry On ranging from 2.73 per cent up to 4.35 per cent antimony.

Curiously samples taken from the Antimony Mine also had reasonably solid shows of silver as high as 27g/t and lead going as high as 2.1 per cent.

The old Carry On mine was mined for 33.5 tonnes of antimony.

Staggeringly, there has been no drilling in the history of its Tallandoon despite its historical production of 100,000-ounces.

Only 1,308m of rotary air blast drilling has been put down at Dart’s adjoining Sandy Creek project that produced 95,691-ounces of gold historically.

Dart is now exploring plans to initiate Tallandoon’s first-ever drilling campaign, aiming to validate its more than 3km of mineralised trend and explore deeper to test for unconfirmed historic references to a granitic dyke containing rich concentrations of antimony at “The Antimony Mine”.

Our review of these Goldfields reveals larger granite hosted disseminated Gold targets that have been lightly tested and the company is excited to continue to explore this highly prospective region. Record Gold and Antimony prices have triggered our most recent work to further re-evaluate these projects, given these favourable market conditions.

The Tallandoon area is known for biotite schists and granitic dyke formations, with significant fault intersections contributing to historic high-grade gold-antimony mineralisation.

The antimony at the project is mostly present as the metalloid sulphide stibnite, while high-grade gold values are suggested to occur in the accompanying quartz veining.

Dart says high-grade quartz-stibnite structures historically occurred in veins about 1m wide. However, the mineralisation was so rich in these structures that despite their thickness, they were worked to depths of more than 200m and strike lengths greater than 1km.

A recent review by Dart management has hinted at the potential of significantly larger disseminated gold-sulphide targets in altered granites and dykes adjacent to high-grade narrow quartz vein hosted mineralisation.

The company says additional mapping and sampling across the Tallandoon and Sandy Creek trends will be underway by early next year, with the priority of establishing focussed targets for a drilling program to follow.

Sandy Creek is also shaping up as something of a curiosity given its intrusive disseminated gold mineralisation hosted in hydrothermally altered granites.

Previous rock chipping and channel sampling done at Sandy Creek by Dart threw up some solid numbers such as 20m @ 4g/t Gold and 2.5m @ 12.3g/t Gold.

Notably the historic O’Dells Mine at Sandy Creek mined crazy high grades of between 400 and 570g/t Gold. The old Honeysuckle mine also churned up some serious grades with a bit over 4000 ounces of gold produced at more than an ounce to the tonne gold.

With both gold and antimony prices hanging around record highs right now Dart appears to have the right suite of minerals on its books. Antimony is in high demand right now given its use in ammunition – something the Russians, Ukrainians, Israelis, Iranians and Palestinians have open cheque books to buy. It is also used in large quantities in glass manufacturing.

Dart’s theory of re-looking at historically worked projects that were thought to be mined out decades ago very often yields results. It is positively spoilt for choice across its projects with even the waste dumps from old workings throwing up grades that would make an existing miner blush.

Is your ASX-listed company doing something interesting? Contact: matt.birney@wanews.com.au