Mt Minnie Project

Location

The Mt Minnie project is situated 200km south of Karratha and 90km east of Onslow.  The project comprises ten exploration licences covering a total 1843km². The company has established an operating base at Onslow. The town is able to offer essential services for the remote field crew to operate efficiently. 

Background and Geology

The Mt Minnie tenements lie on the western end of a zone of faulting and thrusting that occurs along the southern margin of the Pilbara Craton.  It is this zone of thrusting, and associated geochemical activity that was most likely responsible for the gold deposits formed along the “Ashburton structural corridor” running from Mt Minnie through the Paulsens and Mt Olympus gold mines.  This area is the target for hydrothermal iron oxide style copper – gold (IOCG) deposits due to its regional structural setting and age.  Long lived crustal scale structures within Proterozoic rocks on craton margins are widely accepted as amongst the most prospective locations to explore for world-class ore deposits.

Exploration in the area in the 1980s targeted hydrothermal iron oxide related gold-copper mineralisation such as at Olympic Dam / Roxby Downs (38moz gold and 30mt copper) and Prominent Hill (1.9moz gold and 1.5mt copper).  This exploration yielded a number of 2^nd level targets for follow up.  First pass results from the Central Zone prospects returned 8m at 0.24g/t gold from 12m in MMAC01 and anomalous results of 0.1-0.24g/t gold over the entire 48m of the hole.  It is the opinion of the Consulting Geologist that these results on the project to date are very encouraging and supportive of the exploration model and geological setting.   Overall, the region remains relatively under-explored.

The western extent of the Ashburton Tectonic zone that comprises Mt Minnie and surrounds is becoming regarded as a new mineral province. The area is also prospective for Sandstone hosted uranium where the adjacent Manyingee deposit (12,000t of U₃0₈), is located just 6km to the south.   Further uranium channel mineralization at Bennet Well has recently been announced by Scimitar Resources Limited (24km to the south west of the Company’s Mt Minnie tenements).

In 2007 Shaw River Resources integrated all previous geochemical data with the GSWA geology, aeromagnetic, gravity, radiometric, LandSat, digital elevation and air photos to produce a new solid geology map, structural interpretation and target strategy. The study indicated potential for  shear-hosted polymetallic and IOCG (Iron Oxide Copper Gold)-style deposits. The integration study was completed by consultants from RSG Global (Coffey Mining), Tony Morgan from Mincorp Consultants and members of the Shaw River exploration team.