Lancaster Resources Inc (CSE:LCR, OTCQB:LANRF) earlier this week announced the acquisition of the Lake Cargelligo Gold Project in New South Wales, Australia. The company said the project aligns with its strategy to target critical and precious metals with significant exploration upside.
In this interview with Proactive, Andrew Watson, Vice President of Engineering and Operations, said the company is eager to “push Lake Cargelligo forward and make a discovery.”
Proactive: Big news out from the company today — making an acquisition in Australia. Tell me a little bit about it.
Andrew Watson: The thesis at Lancaster has really been focused on exploring for critical and precious metals to help maximize value to our shareholders. We've always looked at historical areas of production with significant exploration upside where we can leverage our internal technical skill set. We believe that gold is the best asset on right now.
We've seen the economic uncertainty globally, and this property has all the hallmarks of gold projects we’re targeting. It’s a world-leading mining jurisdiction in Australia — the Cobar mining district. It has strong geological and geochemical indicators for a potential discovery. Just as exciting is that we’re adding two fantastic geologists based in Australia to our team.
So, we’re thrilled to add the Lake Cargelligo gold project to Lancaster's portfolio.
Let’s talk about the size of it, because I know in the news release you talk about potential district-scale opportunity here.
Yeah, it is quite large. The property is about 287 square kilometres. It’s a single contiguous block in the historic Cobar mining district of New South Wales. Within that clean block, we see three distinct areas for potential discoveries across an approximately 25-kilometre strike length. It’s largely unexplored — under shallow cover — with little to no geophysics.
The geology is a combination of orogenic, intrusive-related gold systems — similar to the Fort Knox deposit in Alaska, which has produced more than 9 million ounces of gold and still holds 1.6 million in reserve. So, there’s potential here for a large, bulk-tonnage type deposit.
But there's also slightly older, more discrete lode-style mineralization, similar to 1.7 million-ounce deposits in Australia. We’ve seen exciting geochemistry and grab samples in public data — some dating back to the 1980s and mid-2010s — with gold grades ranging from 20 to 204 grams per tonne in grab samples and 5 to 6 grams per tonne in channel samples.
Lake Cargelligo contains everything we like to see in a gold property. Now we just need to get boots on the ground and prove the potential.
And that's going to happen in Q3 this year. You're going to get some crews mobilized and do some work. What kind of work are you looking at?
We're excited to get the deal finalized and kick off our maiden exploration — Phase One — this summer/fall. We’re sending a field team out for geological and geochemical sampling to confirm past results. We’ve also identified some new high-interest areas that have never been explored before, which could reveal new mineralization zones.
We’re also planning to acquire and reprocess some geophysical data to help identify zones that might not show up through geochemistry alone. All of this will build our geological models for a highly targeted drill program in 2026.
Sounds exciting. I know you’ve announced a non-brokered private placement of about $400,000 to support this. Lots going on at the company, Andrew. Thanks for your time and congratulations on the day.
Andrew Watson: Thanks very much, Steve. It’s really exciting, and we can’t wait to move Lake Cargelligo forward and make a discovery.
Quotes have been lightly edited for style and clarity