Victorian Copper

Ararat Project

By spending $1 million on exploration over four years, the company can acquire a 75% interest in the Ararat project which has the potential to enhance the development of the Stavely and Ararat copper deposits. Having completed Stage 1 earning requirements of the Ararat Farm-in the company now controls 51% of the project.

The Ararat project tenements (EL3019, EL4758 and EL5076), located east of the Grampians National Park and about 40 kilometres north-east of the Stavely project, cover 220 square kilometers in western Victoria.
The Ararat copper deposit, however, which has an inferred resource of 0.7 million tonnes at 2.7% copper, 0.8 grams per tonne gold and 9 grams per tonne silver, is similar to the Thursdays Gossan copper deposit of the Stavely project. It was discovered in 1975, has been drilled to a depth of 200 metres, and has not been mined. The best intersection to date is 4.5 metres at 12% copper and 8.1 grams of gold per tonne. This deposit has the potential to provide supplementary high-grade feed to a Thursdays Gossan processing plant, and samples of the oxides and sulphides have been sent for metallurgical testwork.

Infill and extensional drilling of this copper deposit commenced in October 2009. All four diamond drillholes (ARD001-04) intersected strong copper sulphide mineralisation, with the best intercept of 3.1 metres at 3.1% copper recorded in ARD003. Shallow, angled reverse circulation drilling also confirmed the presence of oxide mineralisation, to a depth of about 30 metres, above the sulphide mineralisation. The best intercepts from the reverse circulation drilling are 9 metres at 1.9% copper from 22 metres in ARC003, 5 metres at 2.9% copper from 8 metres in ARC006 and 7 metres at 1.7% copper from 10 metres in ARC005.

Ararat Long Section