Christopher McFadden, CEO of NxGold, discusses with Maurice Jackson of Proven and Probable his company’s two far-flung exploration projects.
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Maurice Jackson: Joining us today is Christopher McFadden, the president, CEO, and director of NxGold where the focus is on high-grade gold in world-class districts.
Mr. McFadden, for someone new to the story, who is NxGold Ltd. (NXN:TSX.V) and what is the thesis you’re attempting to prove?
Christopher McFadden: NxGold is a relatively new junior gold explorer listed on the TSX. We are looking to make significant discoveries in good mining jurisdictions with large volumes of high-grade gold that we could eventually convert into mining operations to improve, and increase shareholder value.
Maurice Jackson: Let’s discuss NxGold’s project portfolio, beginning in Western Australia with Mt. Roe. Where in Western Australia is Mt. Roe located?
C. McFadden: Our projects in Western Australia are in a region called the Pilbara. Western Australia is obviously a very large state in Australia. The Pilbara is northern Western Australia, not quite all the way to the top. It’s about 1,500 kilometers north of Perth where not far from the coast there’s a fairly large rural town, called Karratha on the coast, and we’re 30 kilometers to the south of Karratha.
Maurice Jackson: Now, how many hectares is Mt. Roe, and what type of lithology is prevalent there?
C. McFadden: It’s a relatively small project area. We have two blocks; the total land package is 1,200 hectares. In terms of the lithology, there’s lots of different basalt flows, and in some cases some felsic flows that are being interpreted to be eroded and then covered with various sequences of the Roe style sediments and basalt flows.
What I say to people is this part of the world’s crust is some of the oldest rocks that are known on the planet. Some of these rocks I believe are two to three billion years old. That it’s perhaps a bit like a deck of cards that have been shuffled and moved, and changed over time and over geological history. So, it’s quite a complex geological setting on our project area.
Maurice Jackson: Maybe it is too early to determine, but would you define Mt. Roe as a placer deposit, and if yes, what does that mean for shareholders?
C. McFadden: I think it probably is too early to say. I think it’s fair to say the project area has potential for the paleo-placers style of mineralization, but it is too early to determine if it’s the dominant style on the property. An interesting point that will be of interest to shareholders is that our geologists have recently been focused on an older interpreted epithermal type vein mineralization on the property as well, that may have been the source of the recently announced stream sediments anomalies.
I think it was the 8th of August we put out a release showing some of the findings of some stream sediment work that we’ve done. We’ll probably talk about the nuggets later on in our discussion, but there we have found what we call hackly or rough textured gold nuggets on the property, which may have come from epithermal veins. So that, I think, is of great interest, and a strong potential for us on this project in that we possibly have a number of different types of nuggets, and therefore types of their potential sources of those nuggets.
Maurice Jackson: Speaking of those nuggets, do they appear to be generously sprinkled throughout Mt. Roe?
C. McFadden: What’s very interesting is that we’ve been able to find nuggets in a number of places. We’ve been collecting them in the northeast of the project area, and also down the northwest. Down the western side of a ridge, our project has a ridge line that passes down the length of the project area, and that ridge is probably two kilometers or a bit longer. And, we’ve been finding nuggets quite consistently along that ridge line, and in some pockets they seem to be a lot more concentrated, but as I mentioned previously, the number of the nuggets particularly those in the northern areas, are these flattened, what others in that area are calling melon seed like nuggets, and they are like watermelon seeds in terms of even their size and their shape, and that they’re squashed and they’re flat. And, if you look at them very closely, and look at them under a magnifying glass you can see little divots in them where they’ve been pressed and pushed against little grains of sand, and other material. And, they do look exactly like a watermelon seed.
What we’ve also got, and these are the nuggets we’ve been collecting along the western side of the project area, they tend to be rough and hackly. Very different style of nugget, where you can see that they haven’t been squished, they haven’t been squashed and rolled between this other material. So, that’s what making us think that perhaps that they’re coming out of epithermal veins, and we’ve been finding them hopefully close to their source.
Maurice Jackson: You alluded to the nuggets having the watermelon seed shape, which is alluvial. How does that factor into the thesis that this may be an extension of the Witswaterand?
C. McFadden: Well, that’s a very interesting academic argument that others in the area are leading. I mean, it would be wonderful if the Pilbara was the same as the Wits, and was able to produce the same levels of gold. That would be a magnificent result, but I think it’s probably too early to say that we have a similar area or similar geology, or the same style, or same size region. We’re aligned with the thinking of our peers in the area that the melon seed nuggets are part of what looks like potentially a marine paleo-placers system, but there’s a …read more
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