Kairiru

Location

ELA 2858 covers ~836.6 km² over Kairiru, Mushu, Walis and Tarawai Islands and the intervening seabed, about 25 km north-northwest of Wewak in East Sepik Province — one hour by boat, or ten minutes by helicopter, from a town with daily domestic flights. The ground sits at the western termination of the Bismarck Volcanic Arc.

Why we think it’s prospective

Kairiru is a young, partially eroded volcano with a breached caldera. Fluid-inclusion work places formation at about 200°C, and the brecciation and mineralogy confirm the system boiled — the boiling horizon being the level at which epithermal systems deposit gold. Crucially, the system is demonstrably still warm: three documented hot springs and a coastal platform photographed venting steam. A young age means the top of the system is preserved close to where it formed, rather than stripped away.

The central conclusion of our reinterpretation is that forty years of work went to the wrong (eroded, northern) flank, at the wrong level, with the wrong assay suite. The gentler southern flank — geochemically gold-bearing, carrying five priority-one alteration targets, a ring structure and a 46 g/t float — has never had one metre drilled or one soil sample taken.

Historical data, in summary

Five operators worked the ground between 1984 and 1998. All thirteen historical holes (1,503.65 m) were drilled into the north flank; extensive geochemistry exists (nearly 4,000 rock, soil and stream samples) but almost every drillhole was assayed for gold and nothing else. An independent satellite-spectral interpretation identifies 40 alteration targets (17 priority-one), and — tested blind against decades-old rock chips — samples near a spectral target carry roughly three times the median gold.