Rockfire Resources (LSE:ROCK) jumped 4.4pc to 0.6p on Thursday after announcing a significant development at its Kookaburra gold tenement in Queensland, Australia.
The firm has been assessing historical work carried out at the area, which surrounds its core Lighthouse tenement. As part of this, it has found that previous exploration work, including trenching and bulk sampling, identified an alluvial gold deposit known as the Brigalow Alluvial Goldfield.
In its update, Rockfire said it sees Brigalow as a high potential opportunity that could ‘significantly increase [its] gold inventory in Queensland’. It will focus on discovering the hard-rock source either beneath or upstream of Brigalow’s large quantity of alluvial gold.
The development at Kookaburra comes after Rockfire announced in December that its review of historical data at the asset had highlighted outstanding past drilling results at a prospect called Native Bee. Previous work at Native Bee, which lies on a 500m magnetic anomaly near the Pajingo gold mine processing facility, returned strong intervals such as 8m at 2.18g/t gold, including 3m at 5.13g/t gold from 26m deep. With this in mind, Rockfire believes that the prospect offers considerable exploration potential and future work will target a medium-to-large-scale, near-surface gold resource.
In Thursday’s update, Rockfire’s chief executive David Price acknowledged that alluvial gold deposits are ‘notoriously difficult’ to sample and estimate. However, he added that the company would capitalise on the presence on such large quantities of alluvial gold by exploring for primary, hard-rock gold deposits.
“The historical work at Brigalow comprises 20 sites for bulk-testing, with verification of the gold content at the Perth Mint. This is a minimum statistical test for average grade and thickness for the field and provides a preliminary level of confidence for both parameters,’ he said.
‘Historical reports state that gold in the alluvial deposits is likely to be sourced from nearby reefs, as angular fragments of specimen gold were often recovered. This highlights potential for hard-rock targets in the immediate vicinity of the alluvium, including directly beneath, as well as up-stream from the alluvial goldfield.’
To read a recent interview with David Price on our sister site MiningMaven.com covering Rockfire’s entire portfolio, please click here.