Abbotts North
The Abbotts North Project lies 35km north of Meekatharra in the Murchison region of Western Australia. Access from Meekatharra is via Great Northern Highway and the well-maintained Meekatharra-Mount Clere Road, which runs through part of the project area.
The Project falls within the Abbotts Greenstone belt in the northern portion of the Murchison Domain in the western Yilgarn Craton. The belt comprises a north-plunging synformal package of low-grade meta-igneous and metasedimentary rocks including komatiitic and tholeiitic mafic volcanics with pillow lavas and interflow sediments, epiclastic sandstones, argillites and sulphide-rich black shales with dark gossans anomalous in base metals, with poor outcrop due to deep weathering. Structurally, the Abbotts Greenstone Belt is part of the northeast-trending Meekatharra Structural Zone, positioned between the Carbar Fault and Chunderloo Shear Zone. The margins of the belt are structurally complex, and the belt is bounded by granites and monzogranites to the east, west and north. The Rochefort Prospect is hosted in north-south striking quartz vein sets within dolerite and mafic schists, showing moderate to strong albite alteration with narrow quartz-albite-epidote veins, consistent with hydrothermal systems typical of major Yilgarn Craton gold deposits (e.g., Golden Mile, Rosemont).
Within the belt, the historical Abbotts mining centre produced approximately 1.28 tonnes of gold at an average grade of 31g/t. The project lies approximately 20 km north of the producing Crown Prince gold deposit (2.2 Mt @ 3.9 g/t Au for 279 koz Au), which commenced production in September 2025. Two main deposits, the New Murchison King and the Vranizan, are described as gold-quartz reefs within fine-grained tuffaceous sediments with some meta-dolerites.
- The New Murchison King produced 760 kg of gold at 35 g/t between 1897 and 1908. The north-south striking, steeply dipping reef is an average of 0.5 m thick and was mined to a depth of less than 80 m.
- The Vranizan produced 380 kg of Au at 28 g/t between 1898 and 1904 and was mined to a depth of 100 m. The Vranizan is a northwest-striking, northeast-dipping, north-plunging reef approximately 1.2 m wide.
The mineralised Abbotts fault continues north and south under shallow cover into the project area and remains a primary focus for future exploration. Past exploration in the area has been limited, including 34 RAB holes drilled in 2011 at nearby Abbotts West, which returned anomalous gold intersections.
Recent Exploration – Rochefort Prospect In September 2025
Initial soil sampling (20 cm depth, 1 mm sieved fraction, aqua regia/ICP-MS analysis) defined a broad 500 m x 300 m gold-in-soil anomaly with values of 2–16 ppb Au (highly anomalous for the area), coincident with multi-element anomalies (e.g., Bi, W) and extending high-grade rock chip results up to 11.7 g/t Au. A second discrete anomaly (300 m x 150 m) lies ~250 m west, potentially connected under colluvial cover.
Infill UltraFine+™ soil sampling has refined the main anomaly to a coherent +350 m x 350 m zone (open to the south) with peak values to 30 ppb Au (15× background). The anomaly is centred on outcropping quartz-vein mineralisation hosted in highly fractionated and altered quartz dolerite – a proven host rock for major Yilgarn gold systems (e.g., Golden Mile, Rosemont). Re-processed historical airborne magnetics reveal a much larger quartz-dolerite corridor extending under shallow cover to the north, east and south-east, intruding tightly folded ultramafics – an ideal structural setting for fluid trapping and gold deposition.
No drilling has been conducted to date. A larger soil program is scheduled for January 2026, with first aircore/RC drilling planned for H1 2026.