Hawkins hill

The Hawkins Hill gold project is located at Hill End in central New South Wales, about 50 kilometres north of the regional centre of Bathurst. Recent exploration drilling has been focused on resource extension to justify the mining of the Hawkins Hill site, particularly that of the Reward deposit. Exploration drilling is currently being continued with the assessment of the regional gold mining potential of the area at the nearby Chambers Creek and Mares Nest prospects.

Gold Mining at Hawkins Hill Dates Back to the 1850 Gold Rush
The area around the Hawkins Hill gold mining project site experienced intense gold mining throughout the nineteenth century, beginning with the 1850 gold rush that mined out the surface gold deposits. The next major round of gold mining activity occurred again from the 1860's to the 1870's that was more focused on underground highly mineralised hardrock discoveries although they were only mined to rather shallow depths.

Hill End Gold Limited Began Exploration at Hawkins Hill in 1994
Hill End Gold Limited began exploring for gold deposits below these old workings in 1994 that has resulted in it building up a considerable gold resource, both on the surface and underground. Underground mining of the Reward Deposit has so far produced 11 grams of gold a tonne from a total of 35,000 tonnes of mineralised ore.

Hawkins Hill Bulk Sampling Showed Promising Result
This bulk sampling took place between 2008 and 2010 and identified the ore body as having good continuity for over a kilometre. The ore was found to be easily mined and was readily processed. The gold that was mined during this period was quite course grained with continuous and predictable high grade zones. A particularly pleasing aspect of the sample was that simple gravity processing recovered around 95 percent of the available gold.

Increasing Gold Resource at Hawkins Hill Project
At the end of November 2010 the project had a known gold resource of 336,000 ounces that was available from 900,000 tonnes of ore grading at 8.6 grams a tonne at the Hawkins Hill ñ Reward deposit. This area gold resource has now been increased to 581,000 ounces. Hill End Gold Limited has a 100 percent interest in all gold mining tenements surrounding the Hawkins Hill project and is currently focusing on increasing its gold resource to determine the area's total mineable resource, along both strike and depth, before it begins full time production.

Hawkins Hill Mining Operation to be Below the old Workings
The Hawkins Hill project has been re-opened by Hill End Gold Limited where it has established a contemporary exploration scale mining operation below the old workings, where, during the nineteenth century, it had produced 40,000 tonnes of mineralised ore that graded at 10 ounces of gold a tonne. Mainly from shallow workings. However, some shafts had been sunk to a depth of 250 metres. Modern technology and better exploration techniques have now identified highly mineralised ore bodies existing at Hawkins Hill over a two kilometres strike length at a depth of over 300 metres. Underground mining at Hawkins Hill was suspended in 2010 to await the outcome of a scoping study into developing a much larger mining operation at the site.
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