GU Report 10 - Exploration for deeply buried gold deposits in northern Victoria: soil, regolith & groundwater geochemistry of Lockington gold deposits
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Product description:The discovery of buried gold mineralisation at Lockington (45 km north of the Fosterville gold deposit and 60 km northeast of Bendigo) under between 40 and 100 m of Murray Basin sedimentary cover was made in mid–2004 by Gold Fields Australasia Pty Ltd as a result of combined geophysical targeting and regional soil sampling (Turner, 2005). Further buried gold mineralisation has subsequently been discovered on the Lockington East group of exploration licences, approximately 3 km east of the original Lockington discovery. By late 2007, over 100 000 m of aircore and nearly 11 500 m of diamond core had been drilled to define disseminated pyrite and arsenopyrite Au mineralisation in Ordovician basement. Detailed soil traverses were undertaken over the Lockington deposit following its discovery to determine the optimal grain size fraction for sampling (Scott & Turner, 2007). However, the reasons for the presence of regional soil anomalies above the Lockington and Lockington East deposits were poorly understood. In 2006 Geoscience Victoria initiated the Developing Gold Undercover program with the intention of aiding mineral explorers in their search for buried gold deposits in the Gold Undercover initiative area, and elsewhere within Victoria. The Lockington and Lockington East discoveries provided a timely opportunity to confirm the presence of soil anomalies at Lockington and Lockington East, and to further refine sampling and analytical protocols should the initial soil results be confirmed. Further, the area was seen as an ideal location to undertake a hydrogeochemistry orientation survey using existing groundwater bores. The results of these investigations are summarised in this report. This report is but one of several in a series of reports examining the potential for buried gold deposits in northern Victoria (Lisitsin et al. 2007), and providing geological (Moore, 2007a, 2007b), geochemical (Arne et al., 2008) and geophysical (Haydon, 2008) data to aid exploration. Not only does this report assess a variety of approaches to undertaking surficial geochemical surveys in areas of deep cover in northern Victoria, it also provides insight into how metals may have been transported to the near-surface environment. Download The downloadable version of this report is supplied in PDF format. Appendices (MS Excel format) are also downloadable as a ZIP file. Bibliographic reference Arne, D.C., House, E.R., Turner, G., Scott, K.M. & Dronseika, E.V., 2009. Exploration for deeply buried gold deposits in northern Victoria: soil, regolith and groundwater geochemistry of the Lockington and Lockington East gold deposits. GeoScience Victoria Gold Undercover Report 10. Department of Primary Industries. Related products:
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