The Stuart Town Project is located within EL 6575, approximately 65km north of Orange.

The Stuart Town gold fields comprise over 80 quartz vein and alluvial occurrences. Gold mining first commenced in the 1850’s and more than 170,000 ounces of gold was produced between 1875 (when mine records were first kept in NSW) and the turn of the century.

Gold occurs in structurally controlled often laminated quartz veins in stockworks with pyrite and minor arsenopyrite, galena, chalcopyrite, and sphalerite. The veins are structurally controlled by faulting, jointing, cleavage and bedding planes.

The geology of the project area is one of considerable lithological and structural complexity, but in broad terms is characterised by roughly north-south trending rocks. A large percentage of the rocks are tentatively correlated with the Cunningham Formation which is predominantly composed of thin bedded turbidites, slate, bedded mudstone and minor thin feldspathic sandstone beds. Two units within the project area were differentiated by previous explorers, a conglomerate member in the eastern and southern portions of the projects area and an underlying volcanic arenite member comprising a sequence of interbedded volcanic arenites, slates, mudstones and greywackes.

There are over 80 lode gold deposits situated within the project area which include 43 historic mines and numerous alluvial gold workings. The mines that have been the focus of most of the exploration programs are Quartz Hill, Specimen Hill, and Kaiser Wilhelm mines. All except two of the mines lie within the Stuart Town volcanoclastics. The gold occurs in quartz veins from 10cm to 1.2m thick with an average thickness of 30-40cm

In order to determine the potential for an intrusive source at depth below the Stuart Town area, previous explorers commissioned a reconnaissance gravity survey. The most prominent feature identified by this survey was a residual gravity low centred in the region of the Quartz Hill and Manna Hill mines. The feature was virtually coincident with the centre of the magnetic low shown on the Dubbo 1:250 000 sheet.

Aeromagnetic image showing cluster of historical gold workings adjacent to regional contact zone over magnetic anomaly interpreted as a porphyry intrusive unit.

Preliminary modeling of the feature indicated a source lying 200m below the surface which is approximately 1,200m across, and extends to a depth of 1,700m. Further work which included a gradient array Induced Polarisation survey and six percussion holes was carried out.

The results indicated that the mineralisation associated with the rhyolite intrusion at Quartz Hill was low grade however subsequent work indicated large zones of high-grade As up to 50m @ 0.3% As which warranted further work.