A Perth-based company has secured a mining licence for a substantial chunk of one of the most productive goldfields in Victoria, as the resurgence in gold exploration continues across the region.
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The state’s mining regulator, Earth Resources Regulation, this week approved an exploration licence for Kalamazoo Resources Limited for the Wattle Gully gold project in the Castlemaine goldfield.
The licence covers a 70 square kilometre area south-east of Castlemaine.
The ASX-listed company has applied for an additional exploration licence for ‘Wattle Gully South’, which covers a larger area of 218 square kilometres.
Read more: Mining set to resume in Bendigo
In a statement published on the Australian Securities Exchange, the company suggested there was “significant potential to apply modern exploration techniques as successfully applied at Kirkland Lake Gold’s Fosterville gold mine and Catalyst Metal’s Tandarra gold project north of Castlemaine”.
In March, Kirkland Lake Gold re-estimated the amount of gold it was sitting on – claiming to have access to 1.7 million ounces of gold, worth $2.85 billion.
Kalamazoo’s managing director Peter Benjamin said: “The asset is in a supportive mining region which is becoming increasingly active with significant exploration and development success across multiple projects including Fosterville, Tandarra and Costerfield.”
The announcement follows a recent flurry of mining activity in the region.
In February, Chalice Gold Mines announced it secured two exploration licences in the Bendigo goldfield.
The Pyramid Hill Gold Project covers 1300 square kilometres and was ‘leveraged’ by the state government’s ‘Gold Uncover’ initiative which estimated a possible 32Moz of undiscovered gold in the new zones north of Bendigo.
More recently, GBM Gold announced it had been given the go ahead from ERR to revive open pit gold mining near Dunolly, in the historic Harvest Home Goldfield.
The company must have a planning application approved by the Loddon Shire before activity can commence on the 316-hectare site.
Elsewhere, a plan to recover gold from mine tailings near the Bendigo creek in Huntly was given conditional approval by ERR late last year.
Kalamazoo and ERR were contacted for comment.