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Crocodile Gold – Document Review Database

Mining the Territory Conference 19-20 September 2012

By Mark Edwards

General Manager Exploration and Business Development

Crocodile Gold Australia

Abstract

Crocodile Gold has determined the importance of historical data in

preparing plans for the future development of mineral assets in the

Northern Territory. During 2011 Crocodile Gold decided to begin a major

data compilation project on all available historic data. Over the first few

months of this process at total of 841.6GB of data was sent for inclusion in

the database, this is made up of nearly 781,000 files, 937 access databases

and nearly 30,000 MapInfo TAB files.

While this process is still on going, the resultant document review database

and related spatial data is currently being used on active exploration

activities, such as the review of the recently completed VTEM airborne

geophysical survey over several areas of the Crocodile Gold tenement

holdings. The database is also being used to identify new targets that have

not been included in deposit/project ranking in the past, such as the

Snakebite prospect located to the south-west of the Woolwonga mine.

It is hoped that the continuing database compilation work will assist with

future exploration activities through a more thorough understanding of all

the assets (information) available. Crocodile Gold also plans to work with

the Northern Territory Geological Survey (NTGS) to ensure this data is

available to future explorers as any future discoveries may benefit both the

local community and Crocodile Gold.

1.0 Introduction

Since early 2010 Crocodile Gold has been constantly reviewing all Mineral Resources and also all

exploration activities. As part of this early review it was identified that an extensive amount of data

was available, so much data that it has never been collated into a single, searchable dataset. The

data available included;

Hand drawn maps and sections

Numerous plans and sections for all deposits of varying ages and generations

Historic tenement, technical and target generation documents and related GIS files

Thousands of digital files on several different computer servers and external hard drives

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Raw and processed drilling and geochemical data

It was determined at this point that the Company must start a process of capturing this data for use

in future mining and exploration activities. Making this process more important was the fact that

several generations of mining and exploration data had been lost before being captured. An example

of this was a fire in the Mining Library for Dominion that related to the Cosmo Open Pit mine. To

date only one map has been identified from this extensive dataset. This lack of historical mining data

for Cosmo has made the start-up of underground operation all the more difficult.

Crocodile Gold has made significant inroads into developing a reviewable and searchable database

of all historic data available; this includes nearly 281,000 files or more than 840 GB of digital data.

This process will continue into 2013 as there is still a significant amount of data to be included in the

current database.

2.0 About Crocodile Gold

Crocodile Gold commenced operations in the Northern Territory in November 2009 and has 34

registered and reported Mineral Resources in the current technical report (Table 1). There are

several historic Resource estimates, which are not included in this record such as the Mt Bonnie,

Moline and Rhodes deposits. During 2010 Crocodile Gold started a process of reviewing and ranking

all these resources, both current and historical, along with the hundreds of other prospects/deposits

noted in internal and external documents and datasets, such as the MoDAT database.

Table 1. Crocodile Gold reported Mineral Resources (from Edwards et al 2011)

One of the limitations to constructing a detailed document review database with geospatial

capabilities was the fact that the tenements held now by Crocodile Gold had historically been held

Project Deposit Cut-off (g/t) TonnesGold Grade

(g/t)Ounces Gold Cut-off (g/t) Tonnes

Gold Grade

(g/t)

Ounces

Gold

Tom's Gully* 3.7 321,000 8.9 92,000 3.7 193,000 7.8 48,400

Rustler's RoostA 0.5 19,920,000 0.9 572,800 0.5 10,320,000 0.9 302,400

Howley 0.7 6,602,000 1.2 259,000 0.7 1,385,000 1.4 62,700

MottramsB 0.7 1,835,000 1.2 72,100 0.7 1,151,000 1.2 43,900

Brocks Creek*B 7.1 34,000 8.6 9,300

Cosmo* 2.0 5,300,000 4.6 776,000 2.0 5,654,000 3.7 676,000

North PointB 0.7 103,000 1.6 5,300 0.7 146,000 1.6 7,600

Princess LouiseB 0.7 747,000 1.3 31,600 0.7 5,000 1.3 200

Rising Tide 0.7 1,259,000 1.4 57,200 0.7 557,000 1.4 25,500

Fountain Head 0.7 289,000 1.9 17,400 0.7 99,000 2.0 6,200

Tally Ho* 2.0 274,000 4.3 37,700 2.0 114,000 4.9 17,900

Kazi 0.7 410,000 2.0 25,700

Western Arm 0.7 3,383,000 1.1 120,300

Bridge Creek 0.7 1,796,000 1.2 66,800

Bon's Rush 0.7 805,000 2.3 60,400

Mined Stockpiles 0.7 110,330 0.8 2,900

Iron Blow* 1.0 3,175,000 2.1 210,000

Prospect Claim 0.5 239,000 2.4 18,200 0.5 315,000 2.5 25,700

Low-Grade Stockpiles NA 260,000 0.8 6,300

Esmeralda 0.5 1,062,000 2.1 70,300

Lady Alice 0.5 68,000 1.9 4,100

Millars/Big Tree/PingQue 0.5 523,000 1.8 30,100

Orinoco 0.5 135,000 1.2 5,400

Union North 0.5 559,000 1.5 27,300

Union South/ Temple 0.5 818,000 1.3 35,000

Cox 0.5 730,000 1.4 33,100 0.5 74,000 1.4 3,300

Czarina 0.5 1,040,000 1.8 60,300

South Czarina 0.5 294,000 1.5 14,100

Enterprise 0.5 1,061,000 2.6 87,600

Gandy's 0.5 535,000 1.8 31,100 0.5 482,000 2.9 45,300

International 0.5 2,253,000 1.4 105,000

Kohinoor 0.5 470,000 1.8 27,100 0.5 335,000 2.6 28,500

South Enterprise 0.5 500,000 2.0 32,000 0.5 101,000 1.4 4,400

Maud Creek Maud Creek* 1.0 9,288,000 3.1 935,000 1.0 1,072,000 2.4 82,000

TOTAL 51,849,330 1.9 3,175,100 36,352,000 1.8 2,143,400

MEASURE + INDICATED MINERAL RESOURCE

Burnside

Mt Bundy

INFERRED MINERAL RESOURCE

Pine Creek

Union Reefs

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by many different companies (Figure 1). It has only been the last 7 years that one company had held

all these deposits and projects under one management structure, a good example of this is shown by

the fact that over the past 25 years there have been at least 8 different gold processing plants in

operation over the Crocodile Gold group of tenements (see Figure 2), currently there is only one

plant in operation (Union Reef’s) and one in care and maintenance (Tom’s Gully).

Figure1: Tenement ownership 1995 and 2010

Figure 2: Location of Historic Gold Processing Plants

3.0 Exploration Activities 2011-2012

While the process of generating the document review database was ongoing Crocodile Gold has

continued with exploration activities. In 2011 an extensive VTEM geophysical survey was completed

over 7 different areas including the Burnside, Moline and Maud Creek project areas (Figure 3).

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Figure 3: VTEM Survey areas flown by Crocodile Gold in 2011 over Burnside Project

During the past two years a total of 34,500 metres of diamond and 14,900 metres of RC drilling have

also been completed by Crocodile Gold over its projects. This includes drilling at;

Union Reefs (25,900m)

Cosmo (4,660m)

Yam Creek (3,240m)

Rising Tide (6,790m)

Iron Blow (4,000m)

Mt Bonnie (1,400m)

Maud Creek (3,900m)

Combining the VTEM survey, drilling and the database construction Crocodile has spent over $20

million on exploration activities over the 2011 and 2012 period, in 2011 this was split between

Resource development (48%), brown-field exploration (37%) and greenfield exploration (15%).

With this level of commitment to exploration in the Northern Territory it was decided a detailed

review of all available information must be completed and this data should be available during

planning and ranking of all deposits and prospects currently on Crocodile Gold tenements.

VTEM Results

One of the areas covered by the VTEM survey was the area to the north of the Bon’s Rush deposit

(Figure 4), this area is the northern extent of the Cosmo/Howley trend which is a significant area

Burnside

Moline

Maud Creek

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when looking at the current Mineral Resource statement. Deposits such as Howley, Cosmo, Bridge

Creek and Kazi are located on this trend.

Figure 4: Location of Bon’s Rush deposit

Since reviewing the results of the VTEM survey several potential targets were identified in the area

around the Bon’s Rush deposit, the results also indicated further on ground work was required.

Bon’s Rush is a significant deposit to Crocodile Gold as it currently has an Inferred Mineral Resource

of 805,000 tonnes @ 2.3g/t for 60,400 ounces. The VTEM results suggest the deposit may extend to

the north and also suggests it sits on the western side of a regional fold limb, with a similar VTEM

anomaly on the eastern limb of this fold. Due to the deposit being located in a similar geological

setting as the Company’s flagship Cosmo deposit, Bon’s Rush has now become a priority target for

the Company to review and explore.

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Figure 5: Location of Bon’s Rush deposit and VTEM Conductor axes, overlying Aeromagnetic image

showing 2nd vertical derivative

The figure above shows the VTEM conductor axes overlying the 1996 Northern Gold aeromagnetic

survey. Also included in the image is the drilling data that is currently part of the document review

database. I t shows the significant amount of drilling on the fold hinge area and around the Bon’s

Rush deposit in the west, but it also highlights the lack of drilling around the eastern limb of the fold

and also close to the fold axis were several strong conductors have been identified.

During the process of reviewing all the VTEM results and targets, having the document review

database available has been invaluable, it has made it easier for the Company geologists to review

all available data on a project. Figure 6 below is an example where a scanned map showing

anomalous gold values can be combined with the current VTEM conductors to highlight high priority

targets requiring further work.

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Figure 6: Historical Scanned map from North Gold NL showing VTEM Conductor Axis

4.0 Document Review database

During May 2011 a group of Company Geologists, and a team from Mercator Geological Services,

and Neil Fordyce from Minffordd Pty. Ltd., met at Crocodile Gold’s Brocks Creek exploration office to

formulate how to progress with the generation of a searchable and reviewable database. The

original framework for the compilation was to;

Provide a searchable and coherent structure for the current and historic data;

Implement a searchable catalogue system for spatial and non-spatial data discovery;

Use ArcGIS Desktop as the common platform for spatial data;

Aggregate datasets (e.g. drill hole locations, geochemistry sample locations, etc.) to allow for

fast plotting of all data available for a particular data type;

Develop core data sets of base data covering all of the CGAO project areas; and

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Maintain a record of data source and file processing required for loading into the GIS

(metadata). From Tizzard (2012)

In the beginning it was decided that all documents needed to be scanned and all digital data should

be sent to Mercator to be include in the database, therefore no due-diligence was conducted on the

data gathered, meaning a lot of duplicated files were sent. It is estimated 65% of all documents were

duplicated, namely because a lot of the documents were available through the NTGS as open files.

Subsequently it was decided to limit the documents to be sent to include only technical reports and

internal documents, removing all annual reports, open file reports and other reports that were

noted as being sent to the local Mines Department.

The first data was sent to Mercator after this initial visit with a total of 9 data compilations being

sent over the subsequent months. This included all currently available historic reports and other

digital datasets saved on several different IT servers, or on older external hard drives, or even CD’s.

Over the initial few months several hard drives of data was sent to Halifax in Canada for the

Mercator team to compile into the database. A total of 841.6 GB of data was sent, this included;

20,037 library scans (and still continuing)

937 access databases of drilling, sampling and geochemical datasets

29,868 MapInfo.TAB files

7,198 Geophysical files (TIF’s, ECW’s, ERS’s, TAB’s, JPG’s, PDF’s, SHP’s etc)

780,999 files in total

Table 2: File types and number sent for Compilation work (Tizzard 2012)

To assist with Project based exploration work, it was decided that the compilation process should

recognise the project areas as noted in the last Technical Report (Edwards et al 2011). These projects

were also ranked to match the current ranking of exploration project. It was also noted that a data-

coding template needed to be developed to assist with naming of both spatial and non-spatial data.

The ranking and data-coding framework used is shown in table 3 below.

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Table 3: Project Ranking and data-coding

Metadata (or data about the data) is a critical component of this compilation because it describes

the data including (but not limited to), the source of the original dataset, processing steps required

to load into the compilation databases, known locational inaccuracies, data use and limitations, key

words, etc. Descriptive metadata therefore provides the basis for subsequent querying of the data. –

Tizzard 2012. This is critical considering the volume of data available to geologists, a way to quickly

search through the data was seen as a critical step in setting up any database.

In the ArcGIS environment, an international standard for metadata was adopted for consistency and

interoperability (ISO19139 – Geographic Information – Metadata – XML Schema international

standard). In ArcCatalog, metadata can be viewed under the description tab (Figure 7). For the

purposes of this compilation, the Description field contains the geoprocessing stages of working the

source file into the file compilation feature class. Once in the ArcGIS environment, however, all

geoprocessing and tool parameters used to manipulate the file are automatically recorded and can

be accessed by expanding the ‘Geoprocessing history’ section of the metadata. Within ArcMap, the

metadata for an individual layer can be accessed by right-clicking on the layer through the ‘Catalog

window’ > ‘Item Description’. (Tizzard 2012)

Outside of the GIS, the term metadata is also used to describe a number of attributes assigned to

non-spatial files. For example, in the Document Review Database there are over 30 attributes

available to describe a document (title, author, company, tenement ID, prospect, etc. Figure 8).

These attributes, in turn, become the criteria to build and display queries for subsequent data

discovery (described in further detail below). – Tizzard 2012

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Figure 7: Example of ArcGIS metadata (Tizzard 2012) – {Note file name D1001 - D = Drilling, 1 =

Burnside, 001 = first file in sequence}

Figure 8; Document Review database front end, showing format of metadata

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Crocodile Gold is still working on the compilation process, however, the database is functional and

being used even though the work is not complete. Through the assistance of the exploration team

based in Stawell Gold Mine, Victoria, documents are still being scanned and processed into the

database and the team of geologists are reviewing and creating metadata for these reports. This will

continue into 2013.

5.0 Results

Through the compilation process thousands of drill collar files have been identified, with these there

are tens of thousands of ancillary files (assays, surveys, lithology for example). It has been noted that

there are over 70,000 drill holes in all the datasets available to Crocodile Gold. Figure 9 shows the

collar location of these holes and compares that to the data available through the NTGS.

This data is not validated and is not suitable for Mineral Resource estimation work; however, it does

show what data is available for future exploration activities. For Resource work this data must be

validated before being entered into our Drillhole Database.

Figure 9; drilling data available for Burnside Project through internal database and available through

NTGS datasets

Similar results were shown with surface geochemical datasets. Crocodile Gold had at its disposal

hundreds of thousands of geochemical points from thousands of files, all of these have now been

entered into ArcGIS Geodatabases (Propriety ESRI ArcGIS product) for use in future exploration

work. The compilation process has stored 155,000 soil, 30,000 rock chip and 11,500 stream

sediment samples into one searchable dataset.

Snakebite

During the compilation process several new prospects were identified. While these prospects were

known to other operators, they had not been included in Crocodile Gold’s plans due to a lack of

understanding of the data available. One such deposit is Snakebite, which is located to the south-

west of the Woolwonga Mine which in itself was a significant gold producer for Dominion Mining up

until 1995, McInnes 2012 (Figure 10).

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Figure 10; Snakebite location

The “re-discovery” steps involved in this project was as follows. Firstly a documented titled

“Memorandum SEL24352 Snakebite – Proposed RC Drilling Program 2007” was identified for further

review. The metadata for the document was entered into the database (Figure 11), during this step

the geological review of the memo identifies the associated geochemical data, which has anomalous

gold values. A search of the geochemical data discovered a MapInfo file which is processed into a

feature layer in ArcGIS. The metadata was then updated in the document review database to reflect

the geochemical data.

Once this was done the Snakebite deposit was viewed in the GIS environment, this noted the

proximity to other historical mines (Woolwonga and Glencoe) which strengthened the prospect.

From this it was decided to send a Company geologist to site to investigate the local area. During this

process several historic workings were discovered, which highlight the potential of the area.

During 2012, one of the Company geologists generated a detailed report on the Snakebite deposit.

This report will be used to assist with future drill planning and is of a suitable quality to be used in

any future Mineral Resource statements if exploration is successful on this prospect. This work

would not have been done without the assistance of a document review database such as being

developed for Crocodile Gold

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Figure 11: Document Review database – Snakebite capture

6.0 Conclusions

Crocodile Gold is an active exploration and mining company in the Pine Creek region of the Northern

Territory. Due to the over one hundred years of mining and exploration in this region a significant

amount of data is available on several hundred deposits/prospects. While some very good data is

available through the NTGS such as the MoDAT database, a lot of information is only available

through in-house archives. Without a systematic approach to store this data in a way that allows for

searching and querying, a lot of good quality data can be lost or not reviewed.

Crocodile Gold sees this database as a critical tool in targeted exploration in this region. Therefore it

is planned to continue the process of compiling data into the database. It is also planned to continue

using these datasets in all future exploration planning and in ranking deposits for future work.

7.0 References

Edwards, M., Gerritsen, H., Muller, F.L., 2011, Report on the Mineral Resources & Mineral Reserves

of the Northern Territory Gold and Base Metals Properties, For Crocodile Gold Corp, April 4th 2011.

Watson, M. 2012, Annual Group Report (2011) for the Burnside Exploration Project for the Period

Ending 15 January 2012.

Tizzard, A. 2012, Compilation Guide Document Review Database April 2012 (unpublished)

McInnes, M. 2012, Report for Snakebite, EL25748, Burnside Project, Northern Territory, Australia,

June 2012