Catalyst is earning a 51 per cent interest in the Tandarra Gold Project from Stawell-based exploration company Navarre Minerals Limited.

The Tandarra Gold Project is part of the Whitelaw Gold Belt where Catalyst controls tenements over a 75 kilometre strike length north of the historic 22 million ounce Bendigo Goldfield.

The company's first reconnaissance air core drilling program at Tandarra follows a comprehensive review of past exploration activity and was designed to gain initial information on basement depth and geochemistry in areas that had received very little previous exploration.

Thirty one holes were completed on three drill traverses along Upton's Road, Kennedy's Road and Settlement Road for a total metreage of 3,853 metres.

The companies have reported that two significant zones of mineralisation were recorded on Upton's Road around 500 metres apart.

The gold zones in these two holes are associated with a quartz-bearing clay-rich zone with elevated iron concentrations. One of these intersects produced results of 33.1 grams of gold per tonne at a depth of two metres. This strike included one metre at 65.5 grams per tonne at depth of 129 metres. The second strike was five metres at 0.53 grams per tonne from 78 metres.

These intersections are situated around seven kilometres north on strike of the main zone of high grade gold mineralisation at the Tomorrow Prospect and seven kilometres south of the Four Eagles Gold Project and are probably related to the Tandarra Fault.

This Tandarra Fault Zone is virtually untested over the 14 kilometre zone to the north and south of this intersection and will require considerably more air core drilling.

Consecutive one metre samples have been assayed using a total cyanide leach method on a two kilogram sample after encouraging initial assays were received using an aqua regia digest and ICP-MS on small 25-gram samples.

Multi-element data has also been obtained for all basement samples.

​Previous air core holes to the south drilled by Navarre Minerals contained gold values (2.0 metres @ 1.83g/t Au from 61 metres in ACT045 and 1.0 metre @ 2.97g/t Au from 32 metres in ACT046).

Basement depth in this area ranged from 40 to 58 metres below recent cover.

"The discovery of high-grade gold in a widely spaced scouting program is always a bonus,” Bruce Kay, Catalyst's Technical Director, said.

“In this case shows the prospectivity of the major concealed fault structures located between Tandarra and Four Eagles.”