Horseshoe Lights vhms - some history

RNI has been saying for some time now that there is a geo relationship between Forrest-Wodger-Big Billy and it repeated that statement today.

As I have some info about HL resulting from research done a while back I thought that it would help others if I shared it.

The first 2 slides are from the 14/2/13 HOR Presentation. Have a close look at the 2nd one. It's part depiction of what it once was (the open pit) and part what HOR, a new company formed to explore the area further, was hoping to find.

The last piece, text, is my research.





HL was discovered in 1946. It's about 25kms away from Fortnum to the east/north. It had an ironstone gossan at the surface (= Orient) and so was easily picked as a potential gold deposit. It was mined in a small way for gold for decades, with copper (malachite?) being cast aside. In 1964, Electrolytic Zinc put down 8 holes and 7 intersected oxidised material and with 1 hitting sulphide copper min'n from 177-204ms and 290-335ms. However, it wasn't happy enough with what it found and so abandoned the tenements. During 1969 and 1970 Planet Metals drilled 7 holes and had several copper intercepts grading between 0.5% and 1.00%. It did not proceed either. It wasn't til Barrack in the late 1980s (it took over 40 years to find it) found the good copper. This is what it pulled out and how it did it:
# In total, it produced 54,800 tonnes of contained copper. Of this, 30,667t came from the chalcopyrite in the primary/sulphide zone and 24,129t came from the chalcocite in the supergene zone.
# The chalcopyrite was 2.4% average grade and had to be converted as part of 1,587,623 tonnes cu/au via concentrate (yielding 21.3%) then in turn yielding contained copper of 30,667t. This tonnage also produced 94,000 ozs of gold.
# The chalcocite averaged 21.8% and ranged between 15% and 32% I believe. This was Direct Shipping Ore (DSO) which converted to 24,120t of contained copper - no conversion to concentrate needed. The DSO chalcocite was produced from 110,691 tonnes (compared with 1,587,623 tonnes for the chalcopyrite/gold, so 6.55% of the total) and yet yielded about 42% of the total amount of contained copper produced. That's how important chalcocite is.

I have put the bold in just for this post as it may resonate with what today's ann says about readings for copper.