A new lead at Broken Hill

Kalgoorlie, Western Australia — Could there be a virginal extension to the great Line of Lode at the renowned Broken Hill silver-lead-zinc camp in southwest New South Wales? Australian junior CBH Resources (CBH-A) is attempting to answer that very question.

CBH Resources is one of two companies holding land packages at Broken Hill, and the company is now assessing the first results from drilling on what could be an extension of the Eastern mineralization on lease no. 7.

The lease is in an area that was often travelled but rarely looked at by the companies operating at Broken Hill, the same property that provided the genesis for Australia’s greatest mining house BHP, now BHP Billiton (BHP-N).

Broken Hill, known globally as Silver City, was discovered by boundary rider Charles Rasp in 1833 and has since produced a combined 200 million tonnes of zinc, lead and silver, worth about A$70 billion.

The high-grading of the Line of Lode saw some operations close in the early 1980s and slip into further trouble when Pasminco, the only surviving miner, went belly up three years ago.

However, junior miner Perilya (PEM-A) stepped in and took over most of the Pasminco operations and CBH acquired the no. 7 lease from Normandy Mining before it was absorbed by Newmont Mining (NMC-T, NEM-N) in 2002.

CBH turned some heads when it bought Pasminco’s loss-making silver-lead-zinc mine at Cobar, well east of Broken Hill, and made it profitable.

Some of the cash flow has been invested in a modern database on lease no. 7 where the focus is on the Western mineralization, which contains zones of zinc left unmined by earlier operators, owing to problems associated with zinc in the recovery of lead and silver.

CBH director and geologist Ian Plimer, considered one of the most knowledgeable sources on Broken Hill geology, noted that cursory efforts by predecessors had shown there was scope in the Eastern mineralization.

Plimer told The Northern Miner at the recent Diggers & Dealers forum in Kalgoorlie that core assessed to date from drilling in this area showed that the target area was structurally similar to that of the complex and extensively folded mineralization at Broken Hill.

The target area is thought to have a strike length of at least 700 metres, and assay results from six of the nine diamond drill-holes are expected soon.

On the Western mineralization targets, CBH is looking to tap unmined and remnant sections in an intensely mined area, whereas Eastern mineralization is mostly untested and could prove to be a bonanza if it meets with historic grades.

Recent drilling has established a resource in the Western mineralization of 16.7 million tonnes grading 3.2% zinc, 2.2% lead and 26 grams silver per tonne, using a 2% zinc-lead cutoff.