Location and Infrastructure
The Eclipse Gold Project is located less than 55km north of Kalgoorlie, Western Australia and is accessible via a public road which runs through the Project area.
Production and Exploration History
The Eclipse gold mine has had a number of owners since 1902. By 1910 the shaft was sunk to its current depth of 78 metres. The production during this period was 954 tonnes @ 24.6 g/t Au for 754.25 oz Au (source: GSWA Mindex database) and in the 1990s the shaft was refurbished to the bottom level and the collar of the shaft was re-established with concrete.
Prospecting has occurred intermittently on the licence. In the early 1990s drilling was conducted targeting extensions of the Eclipse mine. A further two RC holes were drilled in 1997 targeting the Steinhobel workings (situated ~330m to the northwest of the Eclipse shaft) and in 2004 another phase of RC drilling was conducted infilling and extending upon previous drilling.
A series of soil sampling programmes were undertaken in the early 1990s with additional samples collected from the western edge of the licence in 2004. At various times rock chips taken from both surface and underground exposures have been collected and assayed. The rock chip sampling is not comprehensive and often wide-spaced reflecting the rare exposures and outcrop.
Free gold contained within quartz is reported from old workings in the east of the licence area, and there are also unverified accounts of nuggets reported to have been found along strike between the Eclipse shaft and Jack’s Dream.
Recent drilling (2014) has identified high-grade mineralisation all within a 30-metre zone either side of the main Eclipse shaft – highlights include:
- GD008: 7m @ 13.07 g/t Au from 34 metres
- GD014: 12m @ 5.13 g/t Au from 39 metres
- ERC03: 8m @ 3.11 g/t Au from 66 metres
- ERC019: 6m @ 3.92 g/t Au from 87 metres
Geology
The Project is situated in the Gindalbie domain of the Kurnalpi terrane. Within 3km either side of the Eclipse mining licence (M27/153) are north-south trending regional scale faults. The Gindalbie domain is largely comprised of volcano-clastic sequences. The volcanic units include assemblages of welded tuffs and tuffaceous lavas. Clastic assemblages include interbedded siltstone, sandstone, shale and thin bedded conglomerates.
The Project is located on a north-west trending sequence of felsic-intermediate-mafic volcanics and clastic sediments. All of the rocks are part of the Gindalbie Formation. There is little exposure of the basement geology, with isolated float debris relied upon.
Various soil sampling campaigns have been completed. These soil surveys identified elevated gold concentrations in the middle and southern portions of the Eclipse mineralised system. They also recognised domains in the vicinity of the Houdini and Easy structures as being anomalous. The peak gold-in-soil value at the Eclipse gold deposit is 170 ppb, while the peak value at the Houdini prospect is 73 ppb Au. The peak value within M27/153 at the Easy prospect is 21 ppb Au, while the peak value outside the licence but on the same structure is 267 ppb Au.
