Fairbairn Copper Project

Great Western has a very large 960km2 strategic land position in the rapidly evolving Earaheedy Basin, the 100% owned “Fairbairn Base Metal Project”. Great Western has long held the view that the Fairbairn Project on the margin of the Yilgarn Craton is highly prospective for base metals and established its initial land position in the region prior to the discovery at Julimar by Chalice Mining Ltd (ASX.CHN).

The Fairbairn Base Metal Project is situated near the northern boundary of the Yilgarn Craton approximately 900km north-east of Perth.

Following the globally significant discoveries of magmatic nickel deposits such as Nova discovered by Sirius Resources NL and Julimar discovered by Chalice Mining Ltd (ASX.CHN), the boundary of the Yilgarn craton is now being aggressively explored for nickel, copper and PGE’s . Magmatic nickel deposits are some of the highest value deposits in the world and are a major global source of nickel and PGE’s.

It has long been interpreted that these base metal and PGE deposits occur in mafic intrusions emplaced near to the margins of Archean cratons such as Thompson, Raglan and Voisey Bay in Canada and Julimar, Nova and Nebo-Babel in Australia.

In Geoscience Australia’s 2016 report on the ‘Potential for intrusion-hosted Ni-Cu-PGE sulfide deposits’1 they highlighted the potential for magmatic Ni-Cu-PGE sulfide deposits extending into greenstone belts in the far east of the Yilgarn Craton and under cover along the northern margin, which is where the Fairbairn Base Metal Project is located.

Fairbairn is covered by areas mapped as Archean basement (namely granites and gneiss) and Proterozoic sediments. A thorough review of the historical drilling has highlighted a number of unmapped mafic lithologies within the Archean basement that includes pyroxenite, gabbro, dolerite, lamprophyre, kimberlite, amphibolite and serpentinite. Much of the mafic sequences are under a thin cover of Quaternary transported aeolian and colluvium approximately 2m to 20m thick with the remaining areas covered by up to a maximum 80m of siltstone and shale interpreted as Earaheedy Proterozoic sediments.

The majority of the historical work at GTE’s Fairbairn Project was completed from the late 1980s to the mid-1990s by Stockdale and Great Central Mines, where the area was explored predominantly for diamonds.  The historical exploration work included magnetic surveys, surface sampling, RC drilling, diamond drilling and petrology.

There are 36 drill holes that were historically drilled within the main project area with only 18 of these appearing to have been assayed for nickel. Anomalous nickel assays have been reported within sheared, altered and weathered ultramafic rock in two of these historical shallow Aircore holes; M018 reported a maximum nickel assay of 2,130 ppm, within an interval of 12m @ 1,835ppm Ni from 22m and M017 located 3 km south reported a maximum nickel assay of 1,340 ppm within an interval of 20m @ 1,214ppm Ni from 28m and a shallower anomalous intercept of 10m @ 1,190ppm Ni from 10m (both holes were sampled using 2m composites).

In addition to the nickel potential of the Fairbairn Base Metal Project, shearing and quartz veining was logged in several of the drill holes within the project area that were never assayed for gold. Analysis of aeromagnetic data shows potential for large structures paralleling and along strike of the Marymia greenstone belt where large gold deposits have been discovered.

Giving a complex structural setting, quartz veining within mafic greenstone lithologies along strike from significant known gold mineralisation it would be a reasonable assumption that the Fairbairn Base Metal Project is also highly prospective for gold mineralisation.

Furthermore that the target mafic sequences are under shallow cover that have never been explored for gold, which enhances the prospectivity of the Project which presents as very exciting greenfields exploration opportunity.