Ruddygore Project
The Ruddygore Project is located adjacent to the town of Chillagoe in North Queensland and approximately 150 km west of Cairns. It covers an area of 556 km2. Historically, Chillagoe was a significant mining and smelting centre that was most active from 1888 to 1927, prior to further substantial production of gold, copper and silver from the Red Dome mine from 1986 to 1997.
A recent soil sampling campaign was completed targeting a significant magnetic anomaly. The program has extended the Ruddygore system by another 2 km, to create a 5 km long target zone.
Previous work by Ballymore recognised a major alteration zone associated with a large, copper-lead-zinc-silver anomaly over approximately 2.8 km x 1.9 km. Initial drilling by Ballymore in 2022 confirmed the historic mine area hosts significant shallow copper mineralisation including 86m @ 0.56% CuEq (BRURD002: 4 – 90m). This recent work has confirmed the extension of copper and zinc mineralisation into our recently granted EPM 27840, and further enhances the size potential of this significant copper mineralised system.
Tenements
The exploration permits include Ruddygore EPM 14015, Metal Hills EPM 15047, EPM 15053 and Scardons EPM 27840.
Previous Mining
The Ruddygore Mine was mined from 1896 to 1909 by open cut and shaft access to underground. The mine yielded 1,450 tons of copper from 32,750 tons of handpicked ore at an average grade of 3.9% Cu and 56 g/t Ag.
The Maniopota mine is a skarn deposit mined for lead, zinc, and silver. No production records have been found for this site, but it hosts a series of small pits over 1 km strike length.
The Torpy’s Crooked Creek mine operated from 1904 –1914 when production included 6,000 tons of ore yielding 84,000 oz silver and 920 tons of lead at average grades of 15.3% Pb and 435 g/t Ag.
Exploration Program
The Ruddygore exploration program will explore the historic mining areas (e.g. Ruddygore, Torpy’s Crooked Creek, Maniopota) in parallel with new exploration to advance many prospective target areas that are less advanced.
Ballymore received a grant for AS$300,000 from the Queensland Government to undertake a semi regional heli-borne EM survey over a large portion of the highly prospective Chillagoe Formation rock unit, which hosts numerous major mines including Red Dome, Mungana, Redcap and Victoria to the north, and Mount Garnet to the south of the survey area.
The survey covered the Maniopota prospect within Ballymore’s Ruddygore Project. It represents the first EM geophysical assessment of the area in over 50 years.
The Maniopota target exhibits remarkably similar characteristics to these historic mines. The prospect contains classic skarn-hosted mineralisation, similar in style to other deposits and mines in this area, and recent multi-element soil and rock chip sampling completed by Ballymore has identified broad polymetallic anomalies over 6.5km. Maniopota has proven mineralisation of zinc and copper as well as lead and silver. Ballymore has also recognised anomalous geochemical enrichment of bismuth in soil and rock chips as well as Platinum Group Elements (PGEs) including platinum and palladium in soil. Enrichment has also been identified for other critical minerals such as antimony and selenium with moderate enrichment values for indium, tungsten and tin.
The heli-borne EM survey was completed by SkyTEM and was of a high quality. Final data is awaited and is expected to yield high-resolution conductivity imaging to map accumulations of conductive material such as semi-massive and massive sulphides. The addition of this innovative and valuable geophysical dataset in collaboration with geological and geochemical datasets already collected by Ballymore, should allow the development of exciting drill targets in this region.
In addition, we leveraged off the SkyTEM helicopter-borne EM system being mobilised to the Chillagoe area to undertake a small, additional EM survey over the Torpy’s prospect area. The survey area hosts the historic Torpy’s Crooked Creek silver mine, which operated from 1904 to 1907 and 1912 to 1914 and hosts a number of pits and deep shafts with recorded average grades of 15.3% Pb and 435 g/t Ag. The orebody became unpayable in 1914 at 365ft due to increased sphalerite (zinc) content. Rock chip sampling by Ballymore has reported up to 18.2% Pb, 1.1% Zn & 368 g/t Ag. Soil sampling by Ballymore also highlighted a strong Pb-Zn-Ag-As anomaly that extends over 800m x 270m and this anomaly remains open along strike. The area also hosts various other silver, tungststen-molybdenum and copper prospects.
