Wedderburn Goldfields Ltd Exploring The Historic Wedderburn Goldfield
Wedderburn Goldfields Ltd (WGL) and its wholly-owned subsidiary PSD Minerals Pty Ltd (PSD) are actively exploring the Wedderburn area.
Wedderburn Goldfield
Wedderburn Goldfields Ltd (WGL) aims to re-establish underground gold mining in Victoria’s historic Wedderburn Goldfield — a 51km² goldfield it wholly controls under Exploration Licences EL6302 and EL8296. The goldfield spans approximately five kilometres east–west with its strike length extending up to 7.5 kilometres. The goldfield is positioned on the western margin of the Bendigo geological structural zone — Victoria’s highest gold producing zone and home to some of the state’s major gold-production centres including Bendigo, Fosterville, Ballarat and Chewton. Within the Wedderburn Goldfield lie three historically gold-producing reef clusters — western, central and eastern, each separated by less productive sectors.
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BENDIGO GEOLOGICAL ZONE
Folds are everywhere across the Bendigo zone – so if mineralisation is solely dependent on folds for structural control, why are gold deposits clustered into goldfields and why aren’t goldfields evenly spread across the zone?
HISTORICAL GOLD PRODUCTION
Edwards et al (2001) estimated 115,954 oz au was derived from alluvial deposits, but this is almost certainly a gross underestimate. Many unrecorded nuggets have been found by metal detectorists in the last 40 years.
PROOF-OF-CONCEPT DRILLING
WGL’s 3,300-metre proof-of-concept diamond drilling program successfully delineated a newly interpreted regional syncline and associated anticlines. The synclines and anticlines extend across the full 1.75 km drill corridor.
GROUND-TESTED DRILL-READY TARGETS
Wedderburn’s new underground interpretation of the 1.75 km position of the Regional Syncline and associated Anticline allows for future testing of the mineralised hinge zones in the anticline and syncline.
The Bendigo Geological Structural Zone experienced three distinct gold flow events: 445, 410, and 370 million years ago, and has the greatest gold production of all Victorian geological zones, totalling more than 65 million ounces. It contains most of the state’s 7,000 historical gold mines in major historical mining centres such as Bendigo, Ballarat, Castlemaine and Clunes, and the significant modern gold production centre at Fosterville.
Wedderburn is no different. WGL interprets its exploration data to show a series of regularly spaced major anticlines and synclines across its tenements that are essential for forming the high-grade discreet dilation zones that have produced the most gold within the Bendigo Zone.
This interpretation is based on:
- Ultra-detailed sedimentary and petrophysical logging.
- Recognition of a major regional syncline in the 1.75 km drill corridor in the Central Zone.
- Specialist structural geological mapping.
- Drilling that ground-proofed reinterpreted geophysics.
Wedderburn has all the essential geological characteristics of a significant central Victorian goldfield like Bendigo:
- A now predictable system of major, regional anticlines and synclines associated with reverse faulting.
- Important transverse cross-faulting.
- An aggregate of 33 km of auriferous reefs, mined from 1851 to the 1860s, mapped by Whitelaw in 1907 and ground-proofed by Willman in 2022.
- 178 strike km of fault-fault and fault-hinge zone structures.
- 258 targets identified by Geophysics on WGL’s tenements that warrant further investigation.
What does a historic central Victorian goldfield look like?
The northern end of the Bendigo Goldfield looking south circa 1895. The Bendigo Goldfield contains 37 gold-bearing quartz reefs extending 16 km by 4 km. More than 5,000 mines operated in that area. Because of its scale and success, the Bendigo Goldfield readily attracted capital/funding. It involved many discrete in size and highly profitable mining leases. The majority of Bendigo’s gold production came from discrete gold zones, which essentially breached anticlines and synclines associated with reverse fault structures.
